


There's A Light

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [18]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Angst, Beast Wirt, Beatrice needs a hug, Beatrice the Disney Princess, Gen, Lantern-Bearer Beatrice, Prince!Wirt AU, THE TEETH EXPLAINED AT LAST, Wirt probably needs a hospital, cute horsey town, don't eat the soup, white deer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23075497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Beatrice finds shelter in a quaint town with a secret.Wirt and Greg meet mysterious deer who may have a secret of their own.
Series: Prince of the Unknown [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 70
Kudos: 132





	1. Appleonia

**Author's Note:**

> This part is finally complete!
> 
> If you're new to the series, welcome! Start at the beginning if you want an idea of what the heck is going on.

Beatrice suffered her first panic attack as a bluebird. That day seems like a lifetime ago, a story that happened to a different person, but when Beatrice dares to turn back the page she remembers that terror as vividly as if it has jumped down her throat to eat her inside out. She predicts the nauseated heave of her stomach, the volatile speed of her pulse, and the icy sweat that chills her palms. Beatrice watches her own downfall crash toward her like a thunderstorm, and because she understands at long last that she is powerless, she lets herself collapse. 

She starts crying uncontrollably when the sun goes down; her irregular breaths ramp up until she is gasping raggedly for air, one hand pressed to her collar bones as if that will slow the breakaway tempo of her sledgehammer heartbeat. She doesn’t remember falling, but she’s curled into a fetal position on the ground, her back to the wide base of a tree. Damp leaves stick to her face. Her forehead pounds from where she’d cracked it against The Beast’s skull. The Dark Lantern is cradled close in the quaking C-shape of her body; Beatrice swivels it outward with a wildly shaking hand so that its sickly glow won’t touch her.

_Go ahead. Put me out of my misery._

She flinches at the visuals that strike beneath her eyelids. An Edelwood and a hysterical girl. A desperate father. Eyes so bright they burn right through her. Resentment thick as tar. Had Wirt… 

_Don’t say my name as if you know me, as if we’re friends_

… Had _The Beast_ brought Beatrice to the cabin just to punish her? Is there enough left of Wirt inside that shell who _hates her_ for failing him? Because she _has_ failed him—completely, irrevocably, unforgivably. Beatrice had sworn accountability to her friend; she was the tether meant to hold him back, to keep him in line, and it wasn’t fair that her promise had warped into a curse but she _promised_ to help Wirt remember himself and now Greg is— _Greg is_ — 

_That’s not the question you wanted to ask me, Bluebird._

Over and over Beatrice replays the lilting, singsong cadence of The Beast’s vermin-and-velvet voice, the deft way he’d twisted her wrist and crooned to her as if they were playing a game, and he was handing her a precious hint. Poor Beatrice, too short-sighted to catch on. Too stubborn. Too selfish. The languid spin of his multicolored eyes whirs in her mind a hundred times. The terrible bottomless blackness that eclipsed his humanity is overlaid upon everything Beatrice sees. In the evening holler of owls and creak of insects she hears the sneer that worked its way into his words like a splinter under her fingernail. _Go on. Look around you._ And rattling in her chest, straining her throat, tensing her jaw is the question that Beatrice finally asked—even though the answer was right in front of her, obvious as the growing Edelwood—and despair consumes her anew.

Greg was not with Wirt at the cabin. Greg is gone. The Beast took him. This is all her fault. 

_I'd hoped you would give up out there._

She should never have tried to save Wirt.

A terrible chill seeps past her flesh and settles into her marrow. She doesn’t _want_ her atrocious fever to return, but when she is burning she knows that The Beast is far, far away. He could be hunting her as she shudders and sobs in the deadfall, part of the midnight that makes the forest fathomless beyond the lantern’s light. Sugar in tea. Blood dissolved in water. Malevolence inhabiting nature itself, a hungry stalker that Beatrice will never escape. 

“C-come and get it over w-with,” she chokes, huddling tighter. “Take your s-stupid soul, Beast. I changed my m-mind.” 

Beatrice breaks everything she touches; in her arrogance she tangled her life with The Beast’s—just as she’d ensnared her own family with feathers—and in doing so heedlessly interfered with the Unknown’s design. Wirt had been trying so hard to be _good..._ but maybe corruption is like the growth of an Edelwood: it happens naturally. There was never anything Beatrice could do but momentarily delay Wirt’s inevitable fate. She’d been fighting an infection with willpower alone and had the gall to be surprised when it went septic.

Nocturnal creatures stir in the undergrowth, circling the girl as she bawls. Shadows jump and sway with the lantern’s guttering flame. The circle of hazy luminescence dims, reflected off the snowflake-flutter of moth wings. It can’t be. Not now. It’s too soon. Beatrice bites her knuckles until they bleed. 

_I am killing two birds with one stone._

Wirt’s soul needs oil.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Beatrice isn’t aware of falling asleep… but she must have cried herself to exhaustion last night, because she wakes up to a tongue in her face. It starts at her chin and laps a sticky line up her nose, between her eyebrows, and over her forehead, and before it can start smearing her hair she’s grimacing and shoving whatever it is that’s _tasting her_ away. “Oy!” Her hands find a stubborn muzzle. She blinks to clear the sleepy gunk from her eyes… and the first thing she sees are antlers carving up the sky like cames of lead between fair blue stained glass.

“What the— _HEY—_ ”

Heart rocketing, Beatrice claws herself backward over the dead leaves and the dried pine needles until she bumps against the trunk of an oak. "D-don't come any closer!" A curse slurs from her lips a split-second later; she searches frantically for the Dark Lantern where she left it on the ground—“oh no, oh _no_ ”—and then yanks it by the handle to rest next to her. The creature who’d woken her so rudely picks its hooves slowly in her direction; as she struggles to shield the lantern with her body, the nobly crowned head lowers itself so that it is not eclipsed by the sunlight behind it. 

Beatrice unleashes a long, open-mouthed groan to help offset the whiplash between panic and relief. She knows that tawny pelt, the handsome white muzzle with its wet black nose. This is the deer that had carried her faithfully through the Unknown while she accompanied Wirt on his Beastly errands; evidently it’s quite fond of her, since it is free to wander as it pleases and yet has found her once again.

Or perhaps it was _sent?_ Her pulse flutters and goosebumps crawl over her arms, but Beatrice glimpses no second silhouette of antlers hovering between the tree-trunks.

“Don’t s-scare me like that, Buck,” the young woman murmurs to her cervine companion. Adrenalin leaks from her system like sand through a sieve and she droops where she sits, blindingly lightheaded. “I thought… thought y-you were...” 

It buffets her chest impatiently with its nose and Beatrice automatically reaches up to scratch at the base of its impressive antlers. She relaxes, impossibly, in time with the deer’s large eyes drifting drowsily closed… and with that calm comes sudden slicing clarity, a harsh mental slap reminding her what happened yesterday, _the cabin,_ what she did, what _Wirt_ did, the danger she’s in, and the lantern is sitting by her hip as unassuming as can be with its dying fire—

Beatrice pushes the stag’s snout away so she can vomit on a patch of wild mint. She hasn’t eaten more than a handful of berries or edible mushrooms for approximately two weeks; the most she brings up is a thin splat that coats the mint like a slug’s slime trail. The hollowness of her stomach makes her weak. The tremor in her limbs cannot be blamed solely on exhaustion or helpless anxiety. Wiping drool from her mouth and moisture from her eyes, Beatrice croaks out a realization: “I’m screwed.” 

Ever supportive, the buck licks her again. Then it hooks one of its antlers gently under her arm; Beatrice grabs the beautifully branching rack so she can stand with the animal’s help, all the while panting and perspiring as if she’s lifting the world rather than her own body weight. Several minutes of knee-knocking and near-fainting later, the girl braces herself on the oak with her feet shoulder-width apart. Her head spins. This isn’t the smolder of The Beast’s power punishing her from afar… but something is definitely wrong.

Beatrice leans to pick up her unholy burden once her vertigo stabilizes; despite its creepy appearance, the lantern’s weight is no more threatening than that of a flower basket. It still feels _right_ to carry it—an extension of herself, almost, comforting in a way that terrifies her because it _shouldn’t_ be comforting. She will not look at the flame trapped inside; that will make it real. 

"Water?" A dry swallow. Can't search for Edelwood if she's too dehydrated—though she knows of at least one in the vicinity she can count on for tinder. Her empty guts churn and she tries again, reaching out to scritch circles along the deer's jawline. "Wh-where can I find water, Buck? Or food?"

_Are you sure you don’t want to lie down and rest?_

She wants to weep with relief when the stag flicks its ears at her in apparent comprehension. It walks five steps and glances back, expectant. Beatrice gingerly shifts her weight from the oak's support and wobbles after her animal guide with one bracing arm wrapped around her middle. If The Beast wants his soul back, here's his opportunity. There's no fight left in the redhead. She used it all up stealing this damn thing and it wasn't worth the effort. Or the headache. Or the heartbreak.

_I have all the time in the world to wait for you to let your guard down._

She can’t get the sound of the axe hitting Wirt’s spine out of her head—the split of bone and tissue uncannily similar to the split of a pumpkin’s rind. How he had _screamed._ Tears suddenly wet her eyelashes and Beatrice despises herself for crying over a demon that doesn’t deserve her sadness, who will probably heal from that mortal blow before the sun sets today… unless he doesn’t. 

If Beatrice lets his soul burn out, will the Unknown be extinguished too? Or will the Dark Lantern rip her life from her body to keep itself lit?

_Are you really going to kill me? Come now. I thought you were smarter than that._

The stag’s snowy tail leads her past ferns and ivy, a thicket of honeysuckle, a pink-flowering roseshell azalea bush. Last night she’d been certain it would pour; this morning, sunlight gilds the trees and brings out the russet in Buck’s sleek pelt. Beatrice concludes she must be traumatized if she’s admiring the day after what she’s been through, but presently she hears the splash of running water and pushes herself onward. Soon she limps into a tall-grassed meadow… and there, running through the center, is a shallow brook. 

She drops the Dark Lantern with a clunk on the stream’s silty rim and scoops up water with both hands, drinking until her stomach is tight as a drum. The stag waits with her quietly; when Beatrice has had her fill, it lowers itself onto the rustling big bluestem and switchgrass and permits her to pass out on its flank.

The sun has nudged just shy of midday when her eyelids snap open a second time. A shadow had glided across her face and Beatrice spasms to alertness with a quavering caterwaul, heedless of the deer she accidentally elbows in her haste to defend herself. “ _No—_ don’t t-touch me!”

A pair of ducks blink at her from the stream. They’d flown over her to reach the water, and are unimpressed by her loud panting and ferocious posturing. Beatrice glares at them, cheeks hot... and comprehends that she’d been _sleeping_ and not watching the Dark Lantern and anxiety floods her and—oh… _there,_ it’s there by the brook where she’d placed it who knows how many hours ago, safe and sound. Untouched. 

Beatrice stands up and wields the scant reservoir of her strength to kick the lantern as hard and as far as she can. The ducks take startled wing. She falls on her ass almost instantly—unbalanced—and feels shallow, perverse satisfaction at the jolting clang-clank that rolls through the meadow. 

She hopes that hurt The Beast. She hopes he felt it knocking around the emptiness within his ribs the way she feels Greg’s loss, her own inadequacy, her miserable sadness-hate. She hopes The Beast can still _feel_ at all.

The lantern is a brick-red lump under swaying stems of butterfly weed. Its round window gleams up at the clouds. _Grab it,_ Beatrice thinks, a dare whose ugliness spreads like mold inside her. She lays where she fell like a wounded bird, her glower blazing and tear-streaked. _Gorge yourself with oil. See if I care._

A snort at her shoulder spurs Beatrice back to her feet with a squeal. It’s only Buck, of course, unperturbed by her earlier flailing and ready to keep traveling… or that’s what Beatrice assumes, till she follows the animal’s line of sight to where the lantern reposes. Her own eyes do an aggravated somersault in her skull; the deer is waiting for her to do something.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She tires herself stomping to the lantern; the patient stag ambles after her and politely lowers its crown so that she can hang her onus from one of its sculpted outer tines, as if it is an honor to carry the soul of the Unknown’s most ruthless predator. _Sycophant._ Beatrice considers slapping its haunches to spook it into running off without her… but clumsily hauls herself onto the deer’s back instead, inwardly admitting she won’t be able to move another inch—not without fainting. 

She has to feed herself. She has to feed the lantern. The next Edelwood she finds might be Greg’s.

Would she recognize the little boy in the bark?

Beatrice’s focus fades in and out. She imagines tall shadows drifting between the maples and the sycamores and tenses herself for a twig that Buck passes under to transform into a talon. “Is he torturing me?” The question is mumbled into the deer’s warm fur. “He… he wants to make me complicit. He b-blames me for what he did to...” Her vocal cords pull taut. She imagines The Beast observing her from the branches that arch above her head, smug, giving Beatrice the responsibility she asked for. _Meddlesome, self-centered Bluebird._

Chop the wood to light the fire. She promised she wouldn’t abandon him. He didn’t _order_ her to make a pact—Beatrice forged those chains _herself._ But how is she supposed to take on the role of lantern-bearer? She can’t do this, she can’t— 

A shudder twitches over the buck’s withers. Then it halts and dumps Beatrice off her seat with a nonchalant dip of its haunches and saunters in a new direction. 

She lands heavily on her side and yelps at the unexpected bail. “Wh-where are you going?!” The deer tilts its head so that the Dark Lantern slips off its antler, causing Beatrice to fly into a fit of enraged, frantic name-calling as she scrambles on all fours to reach it before The Beast leaps out of the earth. Her so-called "friend" swishes its tail at her and prances off toward the woods while Beatrice toils to push herself upright in the middle of…

An apple orchard?

Neat rows of apple trees extend to Beatrice's right and left and as far as she can see up a gently elevated hill. She knows that it's nearly summer in the Unknown, sunshine spilling thicker and warmer over green leaves, yet—to her amazement—every single tree is packed with fruit that shouldn't be ripe until autumn. The crisp sweet smell caresses her face on a breeze and makes her mouth water and her jaw ache and her guts _clench._ Food. That beautiful deer hadn’t ditched her—it had brought her where she needed to be. Fantastic, faithful Buck! 

Her free hand closes over the first apple in her immediate proximity: red as a ruby and freckled with new-grass green, its firm skin gleaming as if freshly polished. Beatrice gnashes into it and utters a primal moan of delight around the flood of exquisite flavor. Tart as cider. Sugary as cotton candy. She doesn’t care that she’s sitting with the Dark Lantern in her lap, juice running down her chin and leaves in her hair and dirt matted to her clothes as if she’d been sleeping underground for five days. Her stomach remembers how bitterly it has missed being _full;_ she swallows her mouthful of apple without entirely chewing it and bites again, again, eating as fast as she can in case she has to fight or flee in the next ten seconds.

“Uh… Miss? Are you okay over there?”

Or the next five seconds.

Beatrice’s attention whips downhill. A group of strangers gawk up at her from a dirt path, shielding their eyes from the sun. All but one have the heads of horses above their shoulders instead of human ones, but suspicion is obvious on their long equine features nevertheless. One of them breaks from the others; she holds a hand in front of her as if she’s calming a nervous, bite-prone dog and calls out to Beatrice a second time.

“Are you lost? Hurt? Just stay right there—we’ll come to you, alright?"

"St-stay away from me," Beatrice shouts. The lantern—the damn _Dark Lantern_ is in plain view of everybody! It's broad daylight! They're going to question why she has a lantern lit in the afternoon—and she looks like a mad forest witch—and she probably just stole an apple, _shoot,_ Beatrice needs to run. No one can learn what's inside the russet metal canister or she'll have much, much more than a Beast to fear. 

The stranger's equine ears flick forward the way Buck's had: attentive, alert. "You're not in trouble," she soothes in a faint southern drawl. It's hard to tell on her dappled brown visage, but the horse-lass _sounds_ like she could be Beatrice's age. "Are you… runnin' away from something? Do you need help?"

The only direction Beatrice can go is uphill—and she doubts she'll make it far on that incline. 

Maybe if she shows that she isn't worth the effort, they'll back off?

A mean snarl stretches her lips from her teeth. Beatrice heaves herself to her legs and holds the Dark Lantern like a bludgeoning weapon. "I said stay _away._ You think I'm kidding? Try me."

The stranger inches forward. "Pardon my frankness, miss, but you look a mess—"

"Stay over there! I'm warning you!"

" _Listen,_ there's an inn downtown, they'll get you nice and cleaned up..."

The rest of the herd on the path glance at each other and start to sidle up behind the young, stupidly altruistic horse-girl for backup. Beatrice senses the way a few of them wonder at the lantern she's brandishing and their puzzlement makes her mouth cotton-dry. 

Whatever else the approaching stranger babbles at her, Beatrice doesn’t hear over the roaring in her ears. She swivels on her heel to bolt— 

And sees stars when something bashes into her temple, hard enough to drop her on the spot.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Something cold and wet sits on Beatrice’s forehead. _Dumb deer_ … she isn’t a damn salt lick. This undignified wake-up call cannot be permitted to repeat itself. She mumbles in irritation and lifts a wrist to push Buck’s snout away again… except her hand passes through empty air, no solid deer-head to stop her, and the shock of this has Beatrice flinging the damp cloth that’d been pressed to her forehead clear across the room as if it’s a slug. The cloth hits the opposite wall with a wet _slap—_ and presently Beatrice can make out where she is with wide, confused eyes.

She’s in bed, laying atop a red gingham quilt whose patches are alternately embroidered with apples, daisies, and picnic baskets; the floor is a worn blond hardwood that catches sunshine drizzled in from the open window; the walls are plastered with old yellow wallpaper depicting pastoral scenes of frolicking horses and fluffy sheep. Somebody must be baking a pie, because Beatrice smells the buttery aroma of browning crust and cinnamon-laced apples. The scene is so comforting, so warm and inviting, that Beatrice refuses to believe it’s _real._ Where is the mulch she slept in last night? Where is the stench of mud and rotting leaves? And where is—

“Your lantern is over here, honey.”

Beatrice screams and falls off the right side of the bed. When she pulls herself upright, there’s the brown-dapple horse-girl from the orchard—sitting in a chair next to a nightstand, upon which the Dark Lantern squats like an innocuous bedside lamp. Its light reflects from the stranger’s astonished black irises; she’s halfway off her seat, as if she’d wanted to grab Beatrice before she toppled to the floor. 

“I didn’t mean to frighten you! Everything is alright, I promise. You’re at the Golden Delicious Inn, situated in the middle of Appleonia. We’re a small town founded by—”

“Who knocked me out?” Beatrice interrupts, fury wrestling her alarm to the pit of her stomach. “Are you keeping me prisoner?”

The corners of the equine damsel’s velveteen lips tug upright in a subtle, humorous smirk. “Nobody knocked you out, sugarcube. You ran smack into a branch and knocked yourself senseless. And you’re not a _prisoner_... you can leave whenever you want, though I suggest taking a day or two to rest. You look like you’ve been falling downhill for a week.” The stranger sobers and pitches her tone discreetly. “Are you in any trouble? Don’t worry, I won’t judge.”

Beatrice charily climbs back onto the mattress with its beautifully made quilt. She is acutely aware of her filth, her spindly thinness, the goose-egg on her head, the scratches marked red and inflamed up and down her limbs from thorns and animal fangs, claws and beaks. “Y-yeah… sort of. I don’t want to talk about it, though. Don’t press me.”

“That’s fine,” responds the horse-girl gently. “You can recuperate here as long as you need. My parents own the inn, and they won’t hear of tossin’ you until ‘til you’re good and ready to go.”

“You’re too kind.” Beatrice doubts this filly and her family would be so keen to keep her here if they know what was trapped inside the lantern. How long before they question its eerily burning flame, or Beatrice’s obsession with it?

How long does she have before that dying flame dies out?

“So—what’s your name? I’m Holly. Holly Hotchkiss.”

 _Bluebird._ “...Beatrice.” This undeserved cordiality makes Beatrice queasy. She expects Holly to unhinge her jaw like a snake to swallow her whole at any moment, or snap her fingers and change the wallpaper from farmyard fields to anguished faces. 

“I have an aunt named Beatrice! That’ll be easy to remember. Would you like to wash up? I’ve got some clothes you could borrow, I think we’re about the same size.”

“Uh… sure?”

“After you’re feeling more yourself, we’d love to have you down for supper. Or we could bring you up a plate, if you prefer?” 

“I’d like—”

“Oh, you’d probably prefer to eat in peace, right? That’s just fine—plenty of our guests take supper in their rooms. You like apple pie?”

“I guess—”

“Ma has one in the oven right now. Should be done baking when you’re dressed again.” Holly plops a simple calico dress and petticoat onto the bed with cotton stockings and a towel; she bustles halfway out the door while Beatrice gawks at the clothes as if they’re a snake’s papery shed. “Washroom is down the hall. Locks from the inside. I’ll be back to check on you later.” And Holly is gone with a farewell smile and wave.

Nobody should be that friendly and trusting. It doesn’t make sense. For all these horse-people know, Beatrice is a felon who plans to murder them in their sleep. Those in the Unknown who go out of their way to help strangers usually do so because they have a _reason_ not to be paranoid—a secret that makes them more dangerous than anybody who’d betray them, or an insidious plot hiding behind their hospitality. Beatrice frowns at the lantern, afraid to touch the things Holly left for her. “...What the hell was all that?”

The fire shudders at her. _Why are you so easy to manipulate?_

Beatrice grits her teeth. If Holly and her equine family want to hurt her, she will fight them like she’s fought everything else that got in her way thus far. 

She keeps the Dark Lantern in her room despite her better judgment, anxious that drawing too much attention to its importance will raise awkward questions. The washroom is nicer than what she has in the mill; under different circumstances Beatrice would _love_ to soak for hours in the clawfoot tub, but she commands herself to scrub her skin raw as quickly as humanly possible. Her hair… is a disaster. She gives up detangling it with her fingers, which tremble too much from exhaustion to be useful, and piles her locks into a damp bird’s-nest bun with a ribbon that Holly had tucked in with her clothes. A quick appraisal in the mirror confirms that she no longer looks semi-feral—even with the bruised-red contusion throbbing on her brow. “Great. Looking good, lantern-bearer.” 

Beatrice hobbles as quickly as her aching legs will allow her back to her bed, spurred to panic by the sounds of footsteps trotting down the hall. A minute later, Holly knocks on the door and—with Beatrice’s unwilling permission—enters with a slice of hot apple pie.

Saliva floods Beatrice’s mouth. Her eyes follow the slice like a stray dog slavering after a steak. Miraculously, she restrains herself from tackling Holly as the other girl sets the plate next to the Dark Lantern on the nightstand.

“Thanks for all of this. Your generosity is literally unbelievable,” Beatrice deadpans. Holly giggles brightly at the stiff back-handed compliment, either not catching or simply ignoring the growl under Beatrice’s words. Her laughter sounds uncannily like a whinny. “Why… why are you going out of your way to be nice to me?”

“This is classic Appleonia hospitality, that’s all,” Holly beams, hands on her hips. “I’m glad that dress fits! I can launder your other clothes, if you’d like?”

Beatrice gruffly hands off her ruined apparel. Holly lingers, however, and Beatrice grasps that the filly wants to see her eat the pie. _Oh—it’s absolutely poisoned._

“Do you guys normally eat dessert before supper?” The pie’s crust crumbles into golden flakes at the slightest pressure of Beatrice’s fork. Holly watches, enraptured, utterly unaware of how her guest is studying her for any sign of ill intent. “And, come to think of it, what’s with the orchard, anyway? Isn’t it too early for apples?” Beatrice hesitates with the forkful of pie a centimeter from her lips. _Wait for it…_ Holly will admit that Appleonia is some creepy cursed town built on the graves of those who were fooled by smiling horse-heads, all their tangled corpses keeping the trees fertile and at the peak of their fruit-bearing prime—

Holly settles down on the chair near the bed, as if Beatrice invited her for girl talk. In her head, Beatrice is screaming. “Oh, the orchard? You can thank my grandmother for that. I was on my way to visit her this afternoon with my family when we saw you eating apples like a starvin’ mongrel.” 

Beatrice spits out the mouthful of pie she’d grudgingly consumed. “M-mongrel?!” 

Holly flashes those big horse teeth at her in a brief grin. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. We don’t punish people who need help in Appleonia. And you _definitely_ need help.”

“What do you want in return?” Beatrice counters aggressively. She hasn’t sat back down on the mattress, and glowers down at Holly with her fork poised to stab. 

The other girl’s ears flatten against her skull. Offended, perhaps. The muscles in Beatrice’s arms tense in case Holly lunges at her to wrestle the silverware from her hand. “Nothin’ at all, Beatrice.”

“I don’t have any money,” Beatrice presses. “You probably figured that out when you brought me here. And I’m not trading any of the belongings I _do_ have.” She sees Holly peek at the lantern, and her hand flies out to snatch its handle, perilously close to knocking the plate of pie to the floor. 

It would actually set Beatrice at ease if Holly lost her temper. That would show something _genuine_ in this annoyingly amiable person. She wants Holly to snap back at her, or interrogate her about the lantern, or threaten to throw her in a cage in the basement… but Holly’s mask reveals nothing but pity.

“Sorry,” the filly murmurs in a small voice. “I didn’t intend to upset you. All of this is probably overwhelming.”

And damn it, she sounds so forlorn Beatrice has to slump down on the bed, hands on her knees, feeling as if she kicked a puppy. _Don’t be fooled._ “Don’t be sorry. It’s been… rough.” _Selfishness is always your first instinct._ “Um… when’s supper?”

Holly’s ears perk. She hugs Beatrice’s pile of dirty laundry to her chest as if it’s a teddy bear. “You want to join us?”

Beatrice would rather pull out each of her individual fingernails with her own teeth… but she needs information, she needs _oil,_ and if the Hotchkiss family is half as helpful as they pretend to be then they’ll give her answers. “Yeah. I’d love to.”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Beatrice finishes her pie in peace—un-poisoned. The sun rubs its belly over the rooftops of the quaint town framed through her bedroom window while she eats; once the sky is sunset-bronze, simple electric lights pop on along the busy streets. Wirt, if he were here, would recognize the fashion as early 1900s, post-Victorian: still stiff with proprietary elegance but designed to accommodate a more active lifestyle. He would know the names of all the wide, stately hats that adorn ladies' heads like exotic preening birds; the flowing fabric of high-collared dresses and the smartly tailored suits would make him gush; he might stop to admire the facades of the simple shop fronts _if_ he could tear his attention away from the vast orchard rolling from the north hill, which completes quaint Appleonia like the backdrop to a Currier and Ives print. 

Too bad Wirt isn’t here. 

Tension unspools in Beatrice inch by stubborn inch. When there’s finally enough slack in her chest to take a proper breath, she also has enough room to be _sad,_ and allows herself a good hard cry over how much Greg would have adored that apple pie. 

A knock at her door alerts her to suppertime. Beatrice furiously wipes her eyes, shields the lantern’s light with a sheet, and stuffs it under the bed before stumbling out to meet Holly.

The vast multi-tabled dining room is buzzing with conversation. A man with a palomino’s fair head kisses a horse-woman who looks like Holly on her freckled brown cheek (Mr. and Mrs. Hotchkiss?), and welcomes Beatrice as if she’s an old family friend. Several other equine guests are seated—their names fall out of Beatrice’s head as soon as Holly introduces them—and all around them, at other tables, are more horse-headed Appleonians and regular human guests. The food smells incredible. The electric-lit atmosphere shimmers with humor. Beatrice suspects that none of these people have ever fought with one another, or committed a crime, or _contemplated_ selfishness for an iota of a second in their entire lives.

They make her skin crawl.

“Lovely of you to join us, Beatrice,” Holly’s mother says warmly—as if Beatrice is a guest here of her own free will, and hadn’t been brought in after braining herself on a branch. “Where’re you from? Have you traveled far?”

“A mill,” Beatrice answers tersely from next to Holly. Dinner is vegetable pot pie with a cornbread crust. Gravy rich with notes of white wine and mushrooms bathe her tongue while she chews and Beatrice recalls a different night, only four or five days ago, when what she’d thought had been pearl onions in a stew was actually—

Holly scoops mashed potatoes onto Beatrice’s plate without being told. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asks, all politeness, and Beatrice swallows harshly.

“Yes. My family is pretty big.” She mentions the second part like a threat. _There are people who will miss me if I never come home._

The palomino that Beatrice takes to be Holly’s father refills the wine glass of an old stallion next to him; both were part of the group at the orchard this afternoon. Not everybody who’d seen her stealing apples is at the table, though—could they be searching her room for the lantern at this very moment?

“Did you get separated?” questions Mr. Hotchkiss. The concern in his eyes tells Beatrice that he really wants to know if she ran away from home. “We’ve a post office in town; if you’d like to send a letter out tomorrow, our pony express will have it delivered lickity split.”

Should Beatrice have snuck the lantern to the dining room? A scowl furrows her sore forehead. _Stupid._ How would she have pulled that off? “I… I was looking for two of my brothers…” Why is she blabbing this? Because they’re being _nice_ to her? How many strangers were “nice” to her on her way to the cabin? Is she so far gone her common sense has burnt to nothing? Her throat aches around a lump. “They got lost.”

Holly’s hand rests on Beatrice’s forearm in comfort. Her mother and father wear identical expressions of deep, honest sympathy, and the clatter of silverware in their cozy circle quiets. 

“Those who are lost near Appleonia tend to turn up here eventually,” soothes Mrs. Hotchkiss. “Don’t lose hope.”

“I was lost this winter when I went foraging with my grandmother,” Holly pipes up. “And then The Wanderer led me home. I bet he’ll find your brothers and bring them here too—”

“Holly.” A feather-soft admonishment from Mr. Hotchkiss. 

“We don’t want to unsettle our guest in her delicate state,” Mrs. Hotchkiss adds, equally gently. Beatrice cannot imagine her own mother using such a downy tone with her, words so placid that they cannot possibly inflict shame.

That mildness boosts some of Beatrice’s courage. She came here to learn something, didn’t she? If she’s not going to make this dinner count, she might as well return to her room and escape out the window. There’s nothing to fear from this meek family.

“Who’s The Wanderer?”

Holly sparkles. Her parents eye one another hesitantly, but the other members of the family continue eating dinner as if they’re bored of the topic. “The Wanderer protects Appleonia,” Holly begins energetically, “ever since this winter. No one who lives here or travels here need fear The Beast, nor any other evil spirit.”

“That so?” Beatrice stirs her mashed potatoes around and doesn’t think about Greg at all. His singing voice is locked in the back of her mind because she needs to _pay attention,_ not sob into her shepherd’s pie. “This does seem like a pretty safe town… I don’t think I saw a single Edelwood on my way here.”

The grizzled stallion—Grandfather—makes a low horse’s grunt. “Only one Edelwood ‘round these parts, missy, and you won’t cross another for at least a mile. And she’s a _special_ Edelwood, yes she is...”

“Daddy,” pleads Mrs. Hotchkiss in a similar inflection to what she used with Holly. “This is hardly dinner table talk, especially in front of our guest.”

“Oh, mama, it’s not anything scary,” Holly whines. Her grandfather winks at her and clinks his wine glass against her cup of water. 

“You saw how Miss Beatrice spooked in the orchard, Holly Mae,” Mr. Hotchkiss warns.

“Where is it? Where’s this Edelwood?” Beatrice asks too quickly. Belatedly she bites her tongue, flushing (seriously—could she BE more transparent?!) and attempts to cover her mistake with manufactured fear. “I… I w-want to know which places to avoid. While I’m… looking for my brothers.” The tears that abruptly well on her eyelashes aren’t fake. Her voice cracks as she tells the Hotchkiss clan something true. “I don’t want to cross paths with The Beast again.”

The hush that stifles the Golden Delicious Inn is not confined to where Beatrice sits. Several horse-heads rotate their ears in her direction until Mr. Hotchkiss clears his throat.

“Please don’t fret, miss. This town, and all the land around it, is safe. You have my guarantee.”

“It’s part of the bargain,” Holly interjects, still bubbly, and her parents sigh heavily. “The Edelwood grows on the outskirts of the orchard, overlooking Appleonia—”

“You’ll give her the wrong idea,” Mrs. Hotchkiss chides—the same time Beatrice turns in her seat to face Holly and blurt “Bargain?”

Witches gain their power from bargains—notably bargains with The Beast—and if it’s possible to ally with a creature strong enough to keep the Beast at bay, Beatrice has reverted to mistrusting these Appleonians all over again. Maybe if she were any other mundane girl, the thought of a Beast-free zone would make her feel safe...

But Beatrice carries the Dark Lantern, and that makes her a target _and_ a threat.

“We won’t burden you with all the details,” Mr. Hotchkiss insists, leveling a significant stare at his daughter. “It’s a family matter, and not anything that anybody else should worry about. Your only concern should be getting your strength back so you can locate those brothers of yours.”

“We could organize a search party? Or send some messengers to Grand Oaks and Lexingshire to find out if anyone has seen them?” Holly’s mother asks the question of the whole table, and some of Holly’s relatives nod, inspired, happy to help a young woman most of them had just met this evening for no other reason than that they _want_ to. They want to help her, and Beatrice brought The Beast’s core into their home…

“Excuse me,” Beatrice mutters. She pushes away from the table at Holly’s protests and flees down the hall, blood thumping through her veins. 

The Dark Lantern is where she sequestered it under the bed. Its brilliance has dulled to a honey-gold that throbs like her pulse; when she holds it up, that feeble light doesn’t even reach the corners of her room. 

“I hate you,” Beatrice hisses angrily. It’s been hard enough steeling herself to chop down a grave that used to be a sentient being in order to feed a monster; dreading the retribution of a vengeful guardian spirit adds another horrific layer to the doomed cake that is her life. If what Holly said was true, and the single orchard Edelwood is connected to Appleonia is connected to this Wanderer-thing… what will happen when she destroys it? Does she have any other options? Any at all?

When Beatrice places the Dark Lantern back on her nightstand, the flame inside momentarily gutters so low in its window that it’s as if a draft has winked it out. She drops her head in her hands. She can’t afford to prolong her search. Come hell or high water, she’ll find this lonely Edelwood, and she’ll fuel the lantern _tonight._

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Beatrice thanks whatever the hell The Wanderer is that her room is on the first floor. She waits until the liveliness of the dining room silences, and for the guests down the hall from her to settle… and then, when the world outside is the purple of night and yellow of streetlights, Beatrice bundles the Dark Lantern up in a pillowcase and sneaks over the sash. 

A few Appleonians take late strolls past closed shops, chatting inanely to one another while Beatrice hides behind flowering bushes or low brick walls. The majority of people she avoids are sweethearts—giggling lovers rushing home or to the park tucked between the town and the orchard for a rendezvous. Their moony compliments and badly whispered promises have Beatrice fighting her gag reflex; she tries to ignore them, and prays that they don’t notice her shadow, til one amorous pair mutters something that’s surprisingly relevant. 

“I have the key to the shed where they keep the harvesting supplies,” chuckles a grey-headed fellow, flinging an arm around his chestnut darling. “Nice and private…”

“Oh, _you,_ ” the lass titters, swatting him on the chest. Beatrice hunches—scandalized—from behind a rosebush, and a lightbulb goes off above her head. A shed full of harvesting supplies is bound to have an axe. It’s an _orchard,_ for God’s sake. This would solve the obvious problem of how she’s going to fell the tree that will save The Beast’s worthless life. 

As for how she’ll grind that tree into oil… well. That’s a problem for _after_ she cuts the Edelwood down. 

With no other promising leads, Beatrice unhappily follows the happy couple out of the town and into the satin darkness just outside the last row of cottages. The Dark Lantern’s flame is sufficiently shaded by the pillowcase she carries it in; the ring of amber it casts is enough to illuminate the ground immediately in front of her, and whenever the horse-people she’s following meander around an apple tree or bend in the path she’s able to obscure herself by turning the lantern’s window toward her chest. It is a calm, lovely evening, so although Beatrice lingers a decent distance behind she can still hear their obnoxious muffled laughter and the muted plod of hooves—

Appleonian’s don’t have hooves.

Beatrice cracks her neck scouting behind her. Her heart rate explodes upward and plummets downward like the crest of a violent wave upon finding the arch of antlers in the Dark Lantern’s ailing bloom, and forthwith identifying those antlers as belonging to _Buck,_ not The Beast.

“I am going to saw that rack off your skull,” Beatrice spits under her breath. The deer disregards her malice and swings its head into her personal space for chin-scritches. “Jeez… Why don’t you make yourself useful?”

Girl and stag find the shed a few rows into the orchard. Buck solves the problem of how to get the canoodling Appleonians _out_ so that Beatrice can go _in_ by ramming the east side of the shed with maximum force. That sudden, mighty blow rattles the shed’s whole frame; as Beatrice freezes in consternation—glaring at Buck—the paramours inside shriek. 

“Was that an oil-monster?” the lass cries out. Her beau mutters some half-baked reassurance that Beatrice doesn’t hear—which is cut off by Buck slamming into the shed again. This time both citizens dash out the door and toward town, holding hands and miraculously clothed, without a backward glance. 

Buck grunts and lays an attention-seeking snout on Beatrice’s shoulder. Sighing, Beatrice gives her companion a quick scratch along the jaw.

Axes, pruning shears, and other tools for grooming the apple trees are hung upon one wall of the shed. Beatrice chooses a hatchet with a newly sharpened blade that flashes like a spark under the Dark Lantern’s heat; she should be able to remove a fair-sized branch from the Edelwood that she can carry or drag back into the forest, and from _there_ she’ll draft the next phase of her plan. Perhaps sustaining the lantern for another twenty-four hours will be as easy as letting the sap from the wounded Edelwood bleed directly onto The Beast’s flame.

She steps out into the orchard with the hatchet in one hand and the bagged lantern in the other. Buck treads unhurried and silent through the mathematically lined trees and up the hillside’s moderate incline with Beatrice alongside, coldly determined.

Dinner and a short rest has done miracles for her stamina, and her breath is steady once she reaches the orchard’s crest. Ten trees from where she and Buck wait, an Edelwood grows noble and tall above a sea of apples. No tormented faces disfigure its trunk. Its boughs are as strong and elegant as the limbs of a dancer. It might be an ordinary, if magnificent tree, if not for the significant aura of death that shrouds its presence. Not even insects sing in the near area, as if out of somber respect for this soul’s grave.

But it isn’t the Edelwood’s muted gravity that keeps Beatrice at bay; what forces her to circumvent her goal on the way up the hill—instead of heading straight for it—is the worried rasp of whispers scraping up the orchard’s midnight tranquility. Someone is standing watch at the Edelwood.

“They say Tweedsmuir was hit last week,” one voice rumbles. From where she’s hiding behind the fruit-laden branches of a Winesap, Beatrice cannot see who speaks—but the man has a recognizable equine nicker that roughs his tone. “A cloud of black birds dropped over their corn fields and blighted the whole crop. Sounds like what happened in Brittonhurst earlier this spring.”

“If _anything_ happened in Brittonhurst,” another Appleonian accent answers. “You can’t believe all the rumors you hear. Could be that Tweedsmuir was just unlucky, and wanted to sensationalize a terrible, _normal_ thing that could happen to any crop.”

A third person jumps in, a bit louder than the others. “I heard the birds had glowing eyes, like the fox Old Man Hick spotted on his way to Oarlock.”

Beatrice’s heart kicks behind her sternum. She unconsciously leans into Buck for comfort.

“And you _believe_ that harebrained gelding?” The second voice scoffs. 

“He was right about The Wanderer,” argues the first. “Or is the abundance of this orchard a _normal_ thing that could happen to any crop?”

“That’s different. We have a bonafide _deal._ And even if—if!—Brittonhurst and Tweedsmuir were _actually_ cursed, it wouldn’t matter, because _we_ won’t be cursed, and there’s no point in worrying like a couple of old mares.”

This is bad. Beatrice needs a distraction, something to keep these busybodies away from the Edelwood while she hurries to lob off a branch— _hell,_ at this point she’ll take a few twigs. “Buck?”

The deer swats its tail. In a bound it is shooting across the hillside, broadly swiping its antlers against low-hanging boughs to dredge up a ruckus that audibly panics the group by the Edelwood—“D’you hear that?” “An oil-monster?!”—and abruptly all three of them are pounding downhill as rapidly as their legs will carry them, fleeing from the unexpected threat. Beatrice doesn’t wait for the Appleonian men to run out of sight; she races for the Edelwood with her hatchet drawn and the Dark Lantern swinging by her thigh. 

The regal arboreal shrine towers above Beatrice’s head—she cannot sunder a branch unless she climbs, and she has no idea when the three men will return. Reckless, frantic, she hacks into the bark of the trunk and carves out a chunk of wood as long and broad as her hand. 

Oil wells up pitch-black and thick as melted chocolate from the tender inner pulp. The Dark Lantern clanks in Beatrice’s unsteady grip as she lifts it up to drip some of that unholy sap into the open window… but a flash in the oil—an odd glimmer like gold dust—has her focusing more on the wound she busted into the Edelwood than on properly feeding The Beast’s failing fire. It’s not as if Edelwood oil is a substance she’s seen a lot of in her lifetime—yet wouldn’t she remember it looking like this? Had the ichor on the Edelravens’ feathers carried this same fiery iridescence amid those rotten greens and asphyxiating violets?

From below, Buck bleats to her in warning. Beatrice cusses enough for an entire navy and fumbles with the Dark Lantern to shut the glass and protect the flame, dropping her hatchet, searching the grass for the pillowcase she brought it in—

“ _Halt!_ ”

What Beatrice wouldn’t give, for that to be Holly yelling at her. She whirls to face the three Appleonians charging for her, enraged as they take in the injured Edelwood and the oil-smeared lantern. 

“What on earth are you doing, young lady?!” It’s the owner of the first voice who addresses her, an older soot-colored steed with a snip of white drawn down his brow. “Do you have any idea how important that tree is to our town?”

Beatrice is mute with terror. She can’t tell them why she needs the oil, she can’t reveal her connection to The Beast, so she tightens her hold on the Dark Lantern and says nothing. 

“You have nothing to say for yourself?” snarls an angry bay. The second voice.

The third man does not speak up—and Beatrice doesn’t give him the chance. She abandons the hatchet and the discarded pillowcase and makes a break for it. 

To her credit, she does not knock herself out. Unfortunately, the Appleonians are faster; the third horse-gentleman grabs her from behind, arms looping around her waist to lift her off the grass. Beatrice screeches and starts hitting and kicking anything she can reach while holding her burden close, but the men are as solid as the equines their heads resemble, and they subdue her with humiliating swiftness. 

When the first Appleonian reaches for the lantern, Beatrice lunges at him like a striking snake, teeth clacking on air. “Don’t take it from me,” she thunders tearfully—wild-eyed as a spooked filly herself, emotions boiling toward that point where she will drown under their intensity as she did just last night. “You can’t have it, it’s mine, it’s dangerous, I can’t lose it, don’t take it from me please don’t take it—”

“Whoa,” murmurs the man restraining her. His voice is firm, stern, but not cruel. “You can keep it. But you’re coming with us.”

“Wh-where are you taking me? Are you going to kill me?!” Beatrice tries to dig her heels into the dirt and manages only to wiff the very tips of some dandelions. 

The bay’s and the black’s ears flick to attention. 

“We don’t kill people here,” replies the bay, appalled. “You’re going to where all criminals go in Appleonia—to the county jail, to answer for what you’ve done.”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Even the tiny jail in Appleonia is comfortable.

An officer pries the Dark Lantern out of Beatrice’s clawing hands and places it in a room of other “evidence” while she is manhandled into one of three cells. None of the Appleonians want to harm her; Beatrice is by far the most aggressive individual any of them have ever met, and they only handle her roughly after she right-hooks one of her captors square in the snout. 

“You need to settle down, little lady,” the officer orders her with all the authority of a slightly disgruntled grandparent. He makes her a cup of tea and hands it to her through the bars of her cell before shuffling off to his desk to speak with the party that dragged her in. 

Beatrice tries to drink her tea. It’s too hard to sip the soothing chamomile while she’s snot-bawling, so she huddles onto the cot in the corner of the cell and hugs herself as if she can physically stop herself from shattering.

One of the orchard watchmen must know somebody at the Golden Delicious Inn—or word travels fast in this small harmonious town—because less than an hour passes before none other than Holly Hotchkiss arrives. Holly mumbles something to the officer on duty that Beatrice doesn’t notice over her own disgusting hiccups. Apparently the young dappled-brown is extremely convincing; she pads over to Beatrice’s cell holding the Dark Lantern and wearing a mask of hurt and disappointment.

Beatrice gulps for air, laboring to speak. Holly beats her to it.

“Are you a witch?”

The straightforward question hits Beatrice like a bucket of ice water. The redhead sits rigid on her cot. “Of _course_ n-not!”

“We got nothin’ against witches,” Holly continues mildly, “only lying. What’s so important about this lantern?”

“It’s—it isn’t—it’s _mine._ I n-need it back…”

“We had a coven of witches pass by not so long ago. They wanted to warn us about hardship in a few neighboring villages, somethin’ about animals getting infected with Edelwood oil and going crazy. They wanted to know about our town Edelwood, too.” Holly frowns. There is a shrewdness in her deep eyes that fills Beatrice with dread. “This isn’t your lantern.”

Beatrice leaps off her cot and slams into the bars of her cell. Holly stands her ground, not flinching as one of Beatrice’s arms strains toward her. “That thing is _dangerous_ you have n-no idea what you’re holding you have to give it back to me, Holly, _give it back!_ ”

“Were you lying about your brothers?” Holly asks softly. “Do you even _have_ any brothers?”

“Wh-what? No—no, I wasn’t lying. Well—I _was_ looking for two boys, they w-were _like_ my brothers, okay? But that’s not—”

“Was?” Interrupts Holly. “Were?”

Beatrice opens her mouth to screech abuse. To shred Holly until the dumb animal surrenders. Instead she howls out a wrecked wail that rakes itself from her diaphragm, unending, twisting itself high on a point of pain that drags with it all the air in her lungs until she is limp against the bars of her prison. Greg can't be dead—she has to strong-arm The Beast into exhuming the little sunbeam from his bed of dirt and roots, she needs a do-over, she needs to tell Wirt that she's sorry for not listening to him when he tried to warn her how dangerous he was, he showed her what she had to fear and she ignored him, she failed him. Her grief is as much for poor Greg as it is for the brother who killed him; both of the boys are dead in all the ways that matter—but she still needs the Dark Lantern.

She owes it to Wirt. She cannot let The Beast run free.

“I’m not going to ask how you came by this,” Holly says, calm as a breeze and sad as rain. “You have to realize that you can’t bring them back… right? If they joined the forest, you can’t wake them up. You have to let them rest. It’s one thing to make a deal with The Beast, but to _steal_ from him…?”

Beatrice slides to her knees, wordlessly begging. 

"I'm giving this to The Wanderer. It’s not for people like you or I to burden ourselves with," Holly tells her—not asking. "Then we'll let you go. Your room is still ready for you at the inn, if you’d like."

“Don’t,” Beatrice pleads. “Y-you don’t know what I’ve been through to g-get that...” 

But Holly is resolutely walking away from her, nodding goodbye to the shaken officer on her way out.

Beatrice sinks all the way to the floor. With his soul, The Beast will be unstoppable. There is no one to rein him in, no one to challenge him, no bargaining chip that will interest him more than somebody's life offered up. She is less than worthless as a friend, a daughter, a lantern-bearer. She cannot imagine facing her family and carrying this all-consuming shame around her neck. She wishes she was dead.

Half an hour after Holly removes the Dark Lantern from Beatrice’s sight, it seems as if her wish will come true. Heat ignites under her skin, choking her wails into whimpers. Sweat stipples her forehead, her chest, her spine. Her fever is back, as if it had never disappeared.


	2. Babes in the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another flashback, to account for the events preceding the showdown at Anna's cabin.

We are back at the mill, in the past, when The Beast’s rage and then his fear cast thunderclouds over field and forest. We are back in the rain-swept woods, the bloody mud, the cackle and crow of putrid oilborn ravens as they surround their antlered puppet and his innocent prey. We are back to the moment in which the boy who became The Beast is lost to himself—and to the family that took him in.

Greg is unceremoniously hoisted right out of the mire, picked up like a fish in an eagle’s talons when the ravens focalize their malice on Beatrice and Andrew. Feather-whipped darkness blots the trees and the earth and the sky from his sight. The whole world is ink—wet cold liquid black—except for the harsh glare of Wirt’s wide-open eyes above him. They glow every color of the rainbow and project like headlights straight ahead.

Greg knows that Wirt would never hurt him. Wirt can’t even kill spiders that wander into the house when it gets too chilly outside—and Wirt _hates_ spiders. But Greg isn’t so oblivious that he’s unaware of something very, _very_ wrong with his older brother, something other than the clear physical metamorphosis that has corrupted every recognizable aspect of Wirtness. To be honest, Wirt’s Beastliness doesn’t bother Greg in the least; he’s pretty jealous of the cool monster claws and sprightly goat-feet, and there’s all kinds of ideas running through his head about how to decorate Wirt’s branch-antlers. It’s… it’s the _meanness_ that disconcerts Greg. He’s used to Wirt being prickly and irritable, quick to panic, _nervous._ The Wirt who carries him now acts as if all the vicious feelings in his heart have calcified and he doesn’t care who he hurts.

“That wasn’t a good prank to play on Beatrice,” Greg says, his voice jangling with each stride Wirt takes over the black ocean of ground. When Wirt doesn’t answer—doesn’t even glance down at him to show he heard—Greg impatiently pats the arms that hug him boa-constrictor-tight. “Hey!”

At his exclamation, the shadows around them crack like the pieces of a puzzle to unveil the forest, vaporous with the blue-grey of mist. Raindrops sting Greg’s face. The oily ravens trail behind them like a hundred kites pulled by an invisible string, staring in the same direction as Wirt, their wingbeats spookily synchronized. They are traveling swifter than Greg expected; Wirt’s hooves fly across puddles as if he is a thoroughbred—or as if the soil is slithering like a conveyor belt to speed his progress.

Greg’s mouth pops open into a fascinated _oh._ “Where’re we goin’ in such a hurry?”

Wirt vaults over a fallen log without slowing and for a second they are weightless. Greg hollers a whoop of joy—he can’t help it, he’s a _kid_ —and it’s this noise that grabs Wirt’s attention at last.

Wirt skids to a stop, almost somersaulting over from momentum. He looks down at Greg, surprised to see him there, held covetously to his sternum. A confused sound grates from the bottom of his chest and it takes a moment for The Beast to speak. “G͕… Gͅre̼ǧ?”

Greg is equally confused back. “Who else would I be?”

The shade cloaking Wirt’s face shutters in and out. Through the breaks in blackness Wirt’s expression is the scared-pained of somebody who saw a car wreck. Maybe he feels bad for freaking Beatrice out with his poorly executed prank. Frightening people is a job for guys that work at haunted houses—Wirt was never good at practical jokes. 

The ravens swoop and scream around them. They circle closer, weaving over and under the dripping limbs of the trees.

“I̯ h̉a̲v̑e͙ ̫t̝o͛ get you back to B̫ea͒t̀r̥i̚c̍ẻ,” Wirt gargles. He squeezes his glowing eyes shut and the birds shriek louder. “No, no, _no n͒o͔ ͉n̰oͧ ̟n͛o̐…_ ”

“Are you dumping me off with her again?” Greg would cross his arms crossly if he could move them. “Or… are you saying ‘no,’ you’re not taking me back there? Or ‘no’ that was a bad prank? Or ‘no’ you’re not going to tell me where we’re going?”

A shudder shakes Wirt like a sapling in a squall. Then he’s a statue of onyx again, facing some faraway spot in the Unknown that Greg can’t see yet. “T̈́o ̮t̞h̲e̋ ͗g͋r̙o͎ṽeͅ, G̯rͅe̺gͪo͍rỵ.”

The ravens aren’t screaming anymore. Their too-bright stares are fixed on Greg, hungry, and then they’re flapping off and leading Wirt into a renewed sprint as if his elder sibling is _their_ creepy shadow. 

Greg frowns at the water-glossed trunks and bushes zooming by. Wirt never calls him _Gregory._ He’s had quite enough of this game, thanks-so-much.

With a shout of “Superrrr—KICK!” Greg slams his heels against Wirt, as hard as his muscles can, as hard as he thinks Beatrice would want him to (she was the one who said that beating sense into Wirt worked best, after all). Wirt grunts—air stamped from his lungs—and Greg wrests himself from those too-tight arms as they spasm to land on his butt in a pile of sopping leaves.

He springs to his feet quick as a rabbit. “This isn’t fun, Beastie-Bro. You better shape up ‘fore I give you a whollup.” For good measure, Greg flexes his arms and widens his legs into a fighting stance, slipping an inch in the mud.

‘Gͯr̙é̥ğor̮̋ỷ͇.” Wirt is hunched over like a werewolf mid-transformation, spine arched and shoulders forward. “Ĉȍm̒e̒ ̮h̯èr̊e͇.” His outline glitches. The ring of blue in his multicolored eyes keeps telescoping in and out, thick and thin. Impatient, the ravens resume their earsplitting racket—they dart at Wirt to dig their claws into him with each pass and smatter at his antlers with their beating wings, and Greg knows they’re _hurting_ him because of how Wirt cringes from the onslaught, how he groans and tries to protect his head with his warped spindly arms.

Greg can’t say he fully understands what’s going on, but he knows a bully when he sees one.

“Shoo, slimey birds! Shoo! Leave him alone!” His haphazardly swinging fists bash into a few squelchy-plumed bodies as he rushes the mob. One or two bust upon his hands like mudballs. “ _Gross_ —Get off him, dang it!”

The ravens gathered in Wirt’s antlers and in the storm-lashed boughs screech simultaneously. Their prolonged, rusty-brake resonance rakes _nails-on-chalkboard_ chills over Greg’s scalp and freezes him on the spot— _terrified_ —and it’s too loud and his ears hurt and Wirt is screeching, too, Wirt is screaming “ _Run!_ ” and Greg is so scared he doesn’t even argue, he just picks a direction and _goes._

The meanness, the callous voice that calls Greg the wrong thing, that’s _not_ Wirt. But the fear, the fear _for Greg,_ that is the Wirt that Greg trusts. 

“Run run run, run run run.” Breathless repetition sets Greg’s pace, helps distract him from the hideous crescendo of bird-shrills cutting the _shush_ of rainfall behind him like broken glass. He runs until a stitch pangs his side and he huffs like an old dog catching its breath. He runs until his borrowed clothes are weighted with mud and he blends in with the stormy woods almost as well as Wirt had. And he keeps running, because he doesn’t know what else to do and he is a flavor of sharp-scared he’s never tasted in his life.

Wirt ladles him up mid-stride just as Greg thinks he’s going to collapse, winded, in a thicket. This time his Beast-brother positions him in a more comfortable hug, securing Greg so that the bewildered lad can peer over Wirt’s shoulder into the silver-gilded trees and mirror-shimmering pools of rainwater that smudge into fog behind them. 

“The oilbirds aren’t chasing you?” His fear is the metallic bitterness of pennies, which he knows the taste of because he put one in his mouth on a dare. 

Wirt utters a growl instead of an answer and the vibration jolts Greg’s chest like the motor of a lawnmower. A slide of eyelids—and the nothingness that blanketed Wirt evaporates, except not completely, because patches of it blot Wirt’s shirt and pants and the side of his neck and some of his hair and Greg realizes that his palms are sticky with the nothingness where he holds onto his sibling for stability. In a past dream, Greg had witnessed Wirt splashed in black like this and Wirt had been _sobbing_ from the pain—

“Are you hurt?”

Another growl—but this one is fragmented into syllables, as if Wirt is trying to speak. “O͉̎-k̇͗̈́ȧ̺y̆,” he struggles to say. “G-gone. Fo̠̐̉r n̂-no͂̌͒w͕̞̾.” He acts unaware of the state of his clothes, his skin and hair, the missing springtime buds in his antlers. 

“Where are we going?” Greg asks again. He hunts for the sweep of black feathers and bleach-white eyes in the gloom with the ruthless attention to detail he gives his closet when hunting for monsters. “Back to Beatrice?”

A whine, keen with remorse. “Can’t. H̑́̒e̽ ̟̦̮k͕n͈̪̎o̤̊̓ws͕. B-Beatrice can’t… h-help.”

“Who knows? What does he know?” 

“Sa̭͇͐f̊e̯̤̒,” Wirt tells him in a wheeze—which isn’t an answer, yet Greg has heard that faraway head-in-the-clouds tone from his sibling too much to request an explanation. “S-safe,” Wirt repeats, quieter, smoothing his tempo into a less desperate canter. “Get you safe. He can’t h-h͓̒av̭̑̓ĕ͙ y͆ou̝̟̿. _Vulture._ ”

“I am safe,” Greg replies, confident. The coppery tang of terror fades and reassurance undoes the knots in his stomach one at a time. When it’s just him and Wirt, he’s the safest he can be.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

_“H͋o̕w̏ d̉àre y̦͊o̻̎u̫̔ c͔a̘̐ll͆ m̝e̬ t͉h̞a̟t?”_

__This is the last thing that The Beast hisses at Beatrice before he seizes Greg in his scavenger’s talons and steals the little boy away in a dizzying whir of stabbing blackness and falling feathers. Rain pelts the forest like stones and rotten oil mixes with the blood of fallen birds. Beatrice is on her knees in the befouled mire, silent and in shock. Andrew keeps shouting at Beatrice’s face; he crouches in the mud and jostles her by both shoulders as if he can shake sense into her—or maybe he is testing to make sure she is still _herself,_ and not about to warp under his fingertips and into the shape of whatever curse The Beast inflicted. _ _

__Beatrice’s stare drops numbly to the gory mess soiling her skirts. If she were to transform again, she does not think she’d be sculpted into something so pretty as a bluebird. The Beast’s wrath would make her ugly, a ruined thing like the slain songbirds littering the ground. She feels the sharp pain of pin feathers needling her upper arms—_ _

__No. That’s just Andrew squeezing her too hard, a raw expression of panic tightening his face._ _

__“Do you know how to find him?!” he asks urgently. “He can’t have run too far with Greg, right? Can Wirt do the—the tea thing with another person?”_ _

__“No…?” Beatrice’s stomach feels as if it’s spilling from her body and into the black-red-brown slurry that oozes over the forest floor. _Can he?_ Can The Beast suddenly submerge others in the Unknown with him at will? She thinks of Greg struggling in the rain, buried under raven wings, and her fingers fist themselves in Andrew’s shirt. “W-we need to be fast—he’ll be traveling on foot, so we sh-should be able to track him like...”_ _

__“An animal,” Andrew finishes for her. His throat bobs and guilt drops his eyebrows for making the comparison, but Wirt acted like a carnivore defending his prey so perhaps that ignoble comparison is valid. “Y-yeah… as long as he leaves a trail.”_ _

__Neither of them bring up how they both saw Wirt manipulate shadows like fabric, how impossible it will be to follow an entity that can sow new growth and restructure nature itself to destroy the evidence of his passing. It _won’t_ be like tracking an animal… it will be like tracking a shooting star or the insidious spread of disease. They cannot predict where The Beast will go. It’s not as if they can set a snare to trap him. This is an insurmountable task. _ _

__They’re going to try, regardless._ _

__The siblings cling to each other, terrified that letting go would mean bubbling into tar or growing raven-beaks or twisting into Edelwood. Andrew has to help Beatrice back to the house; her legs won’t obey her, and she’s concentrating too hard on timing the intervals between her unsteady inhales. Her fever hasn’t flared—yet. That has to mean there’s time to develop an actual plan. Beatrice has beaten Wirt back from madness with her fists and her tenacity multiple times, and she’ll do it _again,_ except she won’t be alone. If there truly is a curse, she’ll make Wirt break it. The Beast cannot ignore his family calling his name. _ _

__Beatrice and Andrew track a bog’s worth of mud past the threshold, still linked arm-in-arm. The family notices Greg’s absence at once. Their silence is an anvil on Beatrice’s chest—pulverizing, inescapable. “Something happened. Wirt is… he...” Beatrice falters. “We need to go. Immediately.”_ _

__Bram, sitting in the front room, slings a travel sack over his shoulder; Beatrice is taken aback that he’s already laced up his boots and is carrying all the tools he uses for tracking and trapping. “I had a feeling,” he admits gruffly. “When Calvin and I saw you lot crossing the river after that monster—”_ _

__“We thought something might be wrong,” Father cuts in. He’s dressed for hunting, too, and Beatrice would be appalled at their grim presumption if she hadn’t just witnessed Wirt shedding every layer of himself to reveal The Beast underneath like a knife from its sheath. “Is Greg… do you know if he…”_ _

__“Beatrice is right, we have to go. Wirt went nuts. He took Greg. We’ll need some things for self defense… the crossbow, the shotgun...” Andrew is properly tying up his boots and Mother is handing him his overcoat without looking at Beatrice—and it hits her. After everything, good and bad, her family fears The Beast more than they trust Wirt. They’ve been prepared for this day since she brought him home with arrows in his back and Beatrice is reeling because how could she _not_ be ready for this when _she’s_ the one who dealt with feral-Wirt in the swamp, _she’s_ the one that Wirt cautioned—explicitly—that he could not be trusted, Wirt gave her _every warning_ and she stubbornly acted as if he were no more threatening than a child throwing a tantrum or a misbehaving dog. She’s been blindsided when she’s the first person who should have seen this coming. _ _

__All it took was Greg being ripped right out from under her to understand, fundamentally, what kind of Beast she is dealing with._ _

__“The _shotgun?_ What’s going on?” Audrey and Cordelia hang behind the men of the house, their faces pale with dread. It’s Audrey who points her concerned eyes at Beatrice, begging her to explain. “Tell them they’re overreacting, Bea. What does Andrew mean, Wirt ‘took’ Greg?”_ _

__“You’re going with them, aren’t you girl,” Mother says, resigned, holding a canvas sack out to Beatrice like the ones packed for her elder brothers and Father. Beatrice accepts it mutely, because this is _surreal,_ her mom should be losing it or commanding everybody to settle down or pestering Beatrice for more information instead of ushering her out the door. _ _

__Beatrice needs someone to wake her from this nightmare. She wants to travel back in time an hour, to when she thought Wirt could be bullied into his senses and she didn’t have this horrific _conviction_ of his Beastliness urging her outside, now, while his trail is still fresh._ _

__“Say something,” Cordelia suddenly cries, tearful. She taught Wirt how to French-braid and how to make flower crowns out of daisies, and her faith in Wirt hasn’t been killed by the timbre of The Beast’s voice echoing from Wirt’s mouth. “Bram wouldn’t shut up about curses. Wirt was _fine_ a few days ago… he had dinner with us… he would never do anything to our family. And he wouldn’t hurt Greg, would he? His own brother?”_ _

__“He’s more than capable,” Andrew answers acidly. “If you saw what he did in the woods…” He cuts his glare to Calvin sitting on the staircase, who flinches and ducks his head. “Are you coming with us, or what?”_ _

__“I’m staying here. In case…”_ _

__“In case he comes back?” Bram jeers. “The Beast doesn’t bring people home, idiot. Let’s _go._ ”_ _

__Andrew is addressing Mother and Father, halfway past the lintel. “We don’t have time for this—Beatrice and I _saw_ Wirt change. He’s not himself. Not anymore. Every second we waste is ground The Beast gains.”_ _

__Beatrice’s youngest siblings whimper from the steps. She can’t believe she ever let them hang off The Beast’s antlers as if he were their jungle gym, that she’d watched them play with the same creature that executed every bird in the woods by the mill to make a point. It could be one of _them_ in The Beast’s claws. Bile churns in her guts._ _

__“Beatrice? Shall we go?” Father gestures to the open door where rain spews across his haggard face. Andrew and Bram have marched onto the path outside, impatient. _Right,_ Beatrice thinks. _My Beast. My problem._ Of course they won’t leave without her—the member of their family who attracts doom like rotting meat attracts flies. She grasps her cloak closed around her shoulders, adjusts the strap of her travel sack, and trods after Father._ _

__Someone stops her with a hand at her back. Beatrice regards Calvin hesitantly, his eyes glued to the floor as he hands her his slingshot._ _

__“Try to bring our brothers home safe,” he murmurs fiercely. “All of them.” In his quick glance Beatrice finds a tentative hope that she can’t bring herself to carry. She pockets the slingshot regardless, and jogs to catch up to her older brothers where they wade across the slowing river._ _

__She hopes the fever-heat that triggers in her blood does not show on her face. It’s disheartening, how quickly Wirt must be running to have snapped their tether in so little time. She resolves not to think about what will happen to her if they never find The Beast._ _

__Would Wirt really torture her indefinitely, just because he wanted to? Is this fever as much a punishment as the dead birds and the storm?_ _

__The bog of avian corpses impacts Father and Bram like a train collision. They’re shocked by the span of death, shaking their heads and swearing and shuffling in place, unsure of where to step. _I didn’t know,_ Beatrice wants to tell them, shame gnawing her insides. _I thought he was our Beast, just like you._ But she also hadn’t known that one _particular_ bluebird could curse her kin, and that didn’t make her mistake any less _her fault.__ _

__Upon entering the area where Wirt abducted Greg, Andrew declares that they should split up to better comb the forest for signs of the fleeing Beast. The elder boys and Father are all experts at discerning animal trails in the anarchic undergrowth; they weave like hounds in the mist, baying back and forth whenever they note something of interest. Beatrice has less practice in picking out clues—but she preyed on tiny insects as a bluebird, and that requires a certain level of observation. She's the one who identifies oil-dipped Edelwood-raven feathers on the ground, and by happenstance nearly steps on a hoofprint mashed into the sodden dirt._ _

__The heart-shaped impression should have been washed away by the deluge. Its edges are so stark, so perfectly undisturbed by the puddles swallowing all the sage that frames it, that if Beatrice didn’t know better… she’d say Wirt had left this behind deliberately. An artful jab at her expense._ _

__“I found something! He went this way!” Her gaze rakes the undergrowth for Greg’s little boot-prints, for more sheer cervid spades. She hears her father’s approving shout (“That’s my girl!”) and her brothers jogging toward her—_ _

__And she hears the unequivocal slither and creak of roots breaking from the earth behind her._ _

__Thorns explode from the mud like a wildcat's slashing claws. Beatrice vaults over a snare whipping higher than her calves, but the next toothy arch coils upward too rapidly for her to evade. Her father and brothers have to pull up short so they won't shred themselves in the vines spreading upward and outward to separate them._ _

__Bram kicks at the impenetrable briars and roars a swear that Father doesn't bother reprimanding him for. "Damn it, Bea! Why'd you have to piss off the ONE member of our family capable of _cursing people?!_ "_ _

__"Would you shut up about curses?" Beatrice screeches back from her side of the wall. "Everything is falling apart and it’s my fault—we get it already!"_ _

__"Do you have a way out?" Father yells over Bram's indignant retort. “Beatrice, are you boxed in?”_ _

__Beatrice pivots in a tight circle, fear metallic in her mouth and acidic in her bloodstream. “No, the way over there is clear… but I don’t see an opening for you to join me."_ _

__“We’ll see about that.” Andrew chops at the brambles closest to him with his compact hatchet; the vines regrow as quickly as the blade severs them. With each new barbed rope that joins the tangle, the smolder under Beatrice’s skin fans hotter and hotter. This is taking too long._ _

__She can’t wait anymore._ _

__“I’m going alone.” Her father and brothers stand rigid, staring at her through the gaps in the chain-link thorns. “I’ll be faster by myself, anyway. And I can handle Wirt.”_ _

__“Like you did earlier? No chance,” Andrew snarls. Beside him, Bram nods stiffly, too petrified or affronted for words._ _

__“Beatrice,” starts her father in a low, warning tone. “Don’t give up so quickly. We’ll find a way around this—”_ _

__“I think this is what he wants.” Why would The Beast divide them otherwise? Why not trap them all at the mill, unable to meddle in his plot?_ _

__Her father reaches out for her from a narrow gap in the thorns, just wide enough to allow his wrist. “Honey, I’m begging you… don’t leave us. It’s not safe. Let’s stick to our plan and do this together— _Beatrice!_ ”_ _

__Her body is tinder. The Beast is tearing her away on a tether made of a candle’s wick and she has to go, this is her curse, her chain, and she knows she’s breaking her promise to her family that she’d never run away from them again but Beatrice doesn’t have a _choice._ She turns to face the open woods, unable to voice the apology that must be written on her flushed face, and races into the pouring rain. She’s Greg’s only hope. Alone with Wirt is the most dangerous place Greg can be. _ _

__

____

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Greg has seen wolves at the zoo. The one his parents take him to is home to a pack of Mexican wolves with ginger ears and ash-laced capes, who will throw back their heads to sing with the children that howl at them from the other side of the enclosure. They’re only about as big as the German Shepherd that Old Lady Daniels used to have, if not a bit smaller; Greg still is not convinced that these wolves wouldn’t make great pets if only he could smuggle one home.

Wolves in the Unknown are different. _Way_ different.

He’s half-asleep in Wirt’s arms, head lolling on his brother’s shoulder, when a massive grey specter flows through the copse in their wake. Two more grand shapes join the first, and Greg gasps to his senses, amazed. It has stopped raining (when did that happen? Did he actually fall asleep?) and the sun lances its horizontal tangerine rays upon those big, lupine frames, setting fire to the ash of their fur. Greg could ride one like a pony, probably, if it let him.

“It’s wolves, like in Three Little Pigs,” Greg whisper-shouts. He thumps Wirt’s back to get his attention—and makes a face when his hand contacts a patch of slick black. “ _Psst._ Little Red Riding-Wirt?” He tries to crane himself away from the death-grip Wirt has him in, and notes _another_ wolf trotting loyally at Wirt’s side. It’s the biggest of the wolves by far, with a hero’s scarred muzzle and a solid black dorsal stripe that Greg wants very dearly to pet. “Look at all of ‘em! Are these your friends? How’d you get wolves to be your friends?”

Wirt stops and places him so carefully on the marshy earth you’d think Greg was a sugar sculpture. Bluish shadows smear under The Beast’s eyes like bruises and Greg is alarmed, perplexed—it’s the same day, isn’t it? Did Wirt have this deathly mask in the river and Greg just hadn’t bothered to check? Did those mud-birds do a harsher number on his brother than Greg thought? “Hmm, you look as bad as Beatrice… you guys don’t have the same flu, do you? I bet Ma’am will make you tea and you can snuggle up on the couch like you do at home—” 

A talon taps his forehead, shushing him. “Stay,” Wirt orders. Gosh, he _sounds_ ill, all rough and achy. Greg’s nerves tingle.

The scarred wolf pads to the younger boy, licking Greg’s cheek as it plops down. The other wolves brush by Wirt’s legs on their way to settle near Greg, also giving him affectionate dog-kisses, their golden irises smart and fierce when they regard their human—and not-human—acquaintances. “You’re Boss,” Greg informs the scarred wolf. He rubs each wolf between the ears as he bestows their title. “And you’re Sugar-Butt, and you’re Daniel, and you’re Corolla.”

“I’ll be back,” Wirt adds—and Greg’s nerves tingle again, because he’d mistakenly thought that his brother was only telling the _wolves_ to stay, for some reason. 

“Wait, let me come with you,” Greg implores. He tries to stand and Boss stretches over his lap, immobile as a boulder. “We hardly got to hang out at all—”

“Play with the wolves. Boss and Sugar-Butt and whoever.” Wirt strides backward, and that single step is tense as a rubber band stretched between his ankle and where Greg sits in the wolf-pile. His eyes won’t leave Greg’s disappointed face. He’s fighting the desire to stay with Greg like he’s supposed to, like a good big brother, or maybe he’s holding himself back from the same hunger that the ravens showed for Greg. There’s a millisecond of _want_ that Greg could exploit to keep Wirt here—but then The Beast jerks himself out of it, and… vanishes.

It’s like wind making leaves dance, or light traveling over water. It’s a ripple of dynamism in the fabric of reality that might’ve been a trick of Greg’s eyes if he hadn’t observed Wirt vanish in front of the mill’s river hours before. 

“He’s a slippery one, Corolla,” Greg mutters to the wolf with cream-colored fur dappling its muzzle. 

Corolla plants another sympathy kiss on his forehead. Then the wolves yawn and stretch and nudge Greg toward a rise in terrain, where they’ve dug a den out from underneath the colossal remains of a dead tree. Greg ambles after them, intrigued. He’s never spent the night in a _wolf house_ before; it’s as fun a place as any to pass the time until Wirt reappears. 

Sugar-Butt plays with him until Greg is too tired to even yawn. The wolves trundle him off to bed in their den and surround him with their furry bodies—a luxurious wolf-blanket—and Greg is so warm, so comfortable on all sides, that he sleeps through the night and does not wake to realize that Wirt hasn’t come back.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The rain becomes a trickle, a mist fine as glitter. When the storm stops, the sun has started its descent, and its light stirs apricot-dyed vapor over the puddled earth. There’d be a rainbow arching toward the east… but Beatrice hikes aimlessly with her rucksack and her slingshot, miserable, and cannot lift her attention from the muck. It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to walk. She should rest, drink some water, _cry,_ only she can’t, because if Beatrice falls behind then her fever will get worse and she’ll never find Greg.

Could this fever kill her? Would it be wrong to hope it did?

“Wirt!” Beatrice isn’t sure why she keeps calling his name. He’d shuddered with hatred before he abducted his little brother, as if the invocation of his title were the most heinous sin; maybe he’ll be furious enough at her rashness to show himself and retaliate. “I know you can hear me! C-come out and face me, _Beast!_ ”

She smudges a hand across her face to wipe away her sheen of sweat, and the skin-to-skin contact feels like a white-hot brand. Beatrice groans and slants into a scaly-barked tree. Is she breathing too fast? Her chest leaps up and down and she tries to reorient herself in a direction where this unbearable heat is just _slightly_ less deadly. North? South? East? West? Where did she come from? Why hasn’t she found any more hoof-prints impressed in the silt?

Sunset bathes the forest with a cider-glow. If Greg isn’t an Edelwood by moonrise, Beatrice will dance for joy. She’ll find the bluebird that put wings on her family and ask for hollow bones again, so she atone for her mistakes under the blissful quickness of a shorter lifespan. Please let Greg be okay, please please _please—_

A black hole of nothingness hollows the wilderness ahead of her. The cessation of Beatrice’s fever strikes her like a gust of snow. Her shaking hands go to her borrowed slingshot—too unstable to aim—and her first shot pings wildly to the left of The Beast’s tortuous crown.

“Wait.” The word is the smoothness of algae on the surface of a stagnant pond. Beatrice curses through her clenched teeth and stuffs her hand into her travel pack, rooting for a knife. The Beast steps forward from the bottomless shade. “L̋is̈tē̙n͉͑.”

Beatrice interprets his advance as a threat. She shucks her rucksack and hurls the whole thing at The Beast with a scream—and as he dodges, surprised, Beatrice charges. 

Her shoulder connects with his chest and she body-checks him—an incredible imitation of the move Bram pulled on a stranger that whistled at her at the market once. The Beast reels off his hooves. Beatrice pounces as he tumbles to the earth, hands gunning for his throat.

“ _Where’s Greg?_ ” It’s a war-bellow, fueled by her rage on Greg’s behalf, her rage for her own broken heart and for the lost boy gagging under the pressure of her ferocious grip. “God _damn_ you, what have you done with him?”

His neck his too human in her fingers, warm flesh and crunching cartilage, and the snarl he chokes out resonates through her wrists—

The Beast dissolves, transformed to fallen leaves and twigs. Beatrice inhales to wail her frustration and expresses only a yelp when a weight smashes into her back and lays her flat into the dirt, in the same spot her enemy had been struggling. Claws clamp onto the nape of her neck, pinning her. The tricolored glare of The Beast makes tears sting in her eyes. “Trying to t̾e̘ll͖ y͊o͋u̫,” growls the creature. His tone jerks from silky-slimy to rock-rough as if he is fighting for every syllable. “He’s… i̠nͯ ̫me͓. N-not safe, had to ta͋kͮe G-Greg…”

One of Beatrice’s arms pulls free—and she hammers The Beast’s night-masked face with the meaty side of her fist. While he staggers, whining in pain, she bucks and wriggles out from under him enough to slam him backward with a kick. 

She kicks him so hard that his shadows dissipate. Wirt—The Beast—hugs his midsection and coughs, and a thread of ink trails from the edge of his mouth. More ink stains blot his shirt and his temple, and here and there Beatrice glimpses a feather stuck to the mess. Her lips curl in revulsion. Had those ravens come _out of him,_ like insects tearing from a cocoon? Had he made them with his own tainted blood, and blamed his madness on them to throw Beatrice off the scent of his festering corruption? 

“Where are your feathered friends?” she spits, scrambling to stand. “Are they guarding your brother?”

“N-no,” answers The Beast. He’s a good actor—that almost sounded _offended._ “I… I _hat̊̓ë̽_ those ravens… th-they’re H͒ïm̈́̓, Beatrice, listen—”

“Shut up.” The frost in her voice chills Beatrice herself. “You don’t get to use my name, either.”

“Wh-what? Beatrice, itͅ's͙̠̚ ͥm̟͗̓e̊͑̍—”

She picks up a stick about as thick as her forearm and rushes at The Beast with a vengeful yell, hefting her weapon over her head and swinging it down. He stops it with his splayed talons and makes the wood bloom with tiny blossoms and spring-green leaves and tender vines that wind over Beatrice’s fingers like baby snakes. 

Surprise drops the stick from her hands to The Beast’s lap; he impatiently tosses it away. “That’s the p͖r̈o͖b̩le̻m͉ w̔i͊t͒h̙ ͗y͉o̳u͖,” the demon berates, timbre hideous and dark. “You n-never want to _t̋h͖ìn͌k̙,_ it’s all m͓i̪n͑dl̆ḙs̽š͍ v̥i̾o͕l̀e̒n̥ce̒. Don’t you see I’m trying to _talk to you?!_ ”

Where does he get off scolding her for violence? It's HIS fault that violence necessary! 

“Show me where Greg is!” Beatrice would tackle The Beast again if not for the thorned vines he nets in front of her like a coward. Their needle-sharpness slices her arms as she swipes at him and she balks. “I could give a _shit_ what you want to tell me, Beast. You think I’d believe _anything_ you have to say at this point? After you separated me from my family? After you _cursed_ us?”

The Beast straightens to his total looming height. He does not gather his obsidian cloak, yet the falling night seems deeper around his hellish form. “I didn’t c̈́u̲rs̱e̟ ̄y͕o̳u̖r̐ ̝fͯa̗m̝ily.” 

Beatrice barks a laugh in his face. “Oh?” Her sarcasm is switchblades and shattered glass. “I guess this is another _accidental curse,_ like the freaking ILLNESS you tortured me with for three _freaking_ DAYS!” 

Her fist rips through the vines with her shriek. It only clips The Beast on his chin, but even that tiny hit floods Beatrice with vindictive satisfaction. She tears at the vines all the harder, feeling at this moment in history that her teeth are worse than the hooks that try to hold her back. “You’re so goddam pathetic—you can’t be happy unless you’re _miserable,_ unless everyone else is as miserable as _you are!_ You gripe about being left alone and then throw a damn _tantrum_ when I take in Greg after YOU asked me to—” She’s throwing punches blindly, incandescent in her ire— “You want to be by yourself, Beast? You want to be alienated and hated by every person in the Unknown? Fine! I’ll stay out of your life like you always told me to! I won’t chase you anymore! Just bring—Greg— _home!_ ” 

They grapple until The Beast edges _into_ a sycamore. Beatrice cracks her finger bones on the pallid bark and muffles her cry by biting the inside of her cheek. The dry-paper crinkle of leaves betrays her foe solidifying at her back—so she jabs out an elbow.

The Beast deflects her arm with the heel of his armored palm. “Aren’t you thë o̘ͅn̮è̞ w͖͛ho̻̗̅ pr̝͛o͆̅mis̟e̽d̫ to _keep my ass in line?_ ” A loathing snarl. He dodges Beatrice’s next uppercut and flays her with irises of blue-yellow. “ _You_ didn’t want to leave me alone—remember?”

“I promised to help my _friend,_ not a self-centered monster!” Beatrice hurls her fist at Wirt’s nose. He catches her knuckles mid-punch and she jumps away, shaking herself as if to cast spiders off her shoulders. “ _You_ cursed me, that’s on _you_ and _your_ Beast-powers—”

Her voice cracks. 

_Had_ she made a deal with the Unknown’s Devil? Is the tether between them all _her_ fault? She recalls pieces of Wirt attempting to scare her away from him this winter, of her anchoring him with her friendship, and... “The splinter,” she blurts dumbly. 

“The what?” The Beast tips his skull to the side. He pants as bodily as she does and the stains on his clothes and skin seem deeper, wetter. "What splinter?"

“I wasn’t trying to make a bargain with you,” Beatrice says, volume climbing. “I just wanted to be a good friend… I said what _any_ friend would say when she’s comforting somebody, it wasn’t supposed to be a _deal—_ ”

The yellow in the abomination’s eyes rolls hypnotically inward. “I don’t know w͂ẖăṭ y͖ȍu͚'r̭é ta͓lkîn͋g̜ about.”

“Undo it!” Beatrice demands. She jabs her palm facing out toward The Beast, fuming. “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I just want you to hand over Greg and leave me alone. Stay away from my family. Stick to your woods and grow your trees and _forget I exist!_ ”

"I _can't!_ " 

The moon hangs too low in the heavens for its radiance to brush them. All they have are the stars and The Beast's shimmering eyes. Beatrice wavers in the evening chill and it requires every last one of her muscles not to collapse from the grief that knifes her.

"Can't? Can't _what?_ Let Greg go? Have you… d-did you…?"

A savage noise shreds from The Beast. He tries several times to answer her with words, bared teeth gleaming in his dirt-marred face, but it's no use. "Trying," the devil grunts hoarsely. A frustrated claw digs at his chest; he's fabricating a performance of his brutality, avoiding answers by pretending to be unable to enunciate. "E̙̙d̒ẽ̤̎l̓w̻̾o̮ͯod̮, Beatrice. He's… not… _ḋ͖ë̟́a̼̞d̜._ "

"If Greg is an Edelwood, he's as good as…" She won't finish the sentence. 

"B͉͌e͍āt̙ric̼ͣ̀ě…"

"Get out of here, Beast."

She'll kill him. She will. With her bare hands.

"Greg is a͓l̇ĭv̒e̊," murmurs the hooved nightmare. "B̾͆e̪l̬iẻ͇v͖e͑̓ me."

"Then take me to him, Wirt." He shivers at his name, but there's relief in the motion instead of abhorrence. Beatrice ventures to feel hopeful. The Beast requires a firm hand and courage to control, so if she keeps her spine straight and doesn't give up then perhaps… “Prove that he’s okay.”

"Soon." The antler-crowned liar blows out a sigh that shrinks his posture and dulls the blaze in his irises—and when Beatrice blinks back her tears, fire crackles through her system at his departure. 

He’s left her. She told him to, she as good as banished him into the Unknown, but she’s no closer to rescuing Greg for all her rage. As usual, Beatrice screwed up. If only she’d kept cool—had some kind of _plan_ better than rushing at her enemy. What the hell is wrong with her? _Why can’t she fix anything?_

Beatrice cries Wirt’s name until an approaching riot of raven-croaks and ravenous wingbeats forces her to pick up any supplies that fell from her tossed rucksack in the dark. The oil-birds are coming for her. She retrieves anything she can touch from the dead leaves and crushed pine needles, sweating from fear and fever, and abandons everything else once the glare of raven-eyes sizzles holes through the forest.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

After his disastrous altercation with Beatrice, Wirt doesn’t head immediately to Greg. He delves into nature, sore and dejected, and attempts to bleed some of his pain into waterfalls and fields so that he can _think._

Even without the ravens impaling Bestial starvation into his core, the young Beast is distraught. His predecessor’s will has been engraved over his own, wounding him, grafting merciless craving to his sanity. He removed Greg from the swarm that apparently harbors the last vestiges of the Unknown’s original Beast, but that desperate act was merely a temporary maneuver—not a solution. Wirt is meant to take Greg to the Edelwood grove, the one he’d been somehow oblivious to, _the grove—_

When his thoughts stray too close to the hub of his forerunner’s consciousness, so does the _rest_ of him, and Wirt must cling to the solid cold centers of mountains and river-tumbled stones to stop himself from slipping into the blood-glutted roots of that cancerous coppice. The old Beast’s jaws are waiting for him there, primed to destroy the foolish kid that stole the Unknown’s heart.

 _You are going to reg̣ret challenging me._

What is _happening_ to him? Why is the decay he’s delayed for over two seasons finally consuming him? Where has the first Beast been hiding all this time while Wirt slaved under the pressure of a crown he doesn’t even want?

A shift like stretching a limb, and Wirt’s awareness surrounds the den of wolves guarding his little brother. The pack curls around a snoozing Greg as if he’s one of their precious pups; the head wolf, the battle-scarred alpha female that Greg called “Boss,” pricks her ears when she perceives the Caretaker’s presence and lets out a gentle _wuff_ of greeting. 

Wirt could crawl through the paw-dug soil and add himself to the bundle of fur. He could reassure Greg in person, could offer to tell one of those bedtime stories he always shrugged off if Greg stirs from his dreams and seeks comfort. But Greg snores and the wolves adjust themselves to nestle closer and Wirt knows when he’s not needed.

Besides… a worm of resentment burrows into him when he lingers too long on Greg’s untroubled features. Wirt has to spirit himself to a different section of forest before that antagonism erodes his fervent protective streak.

Wirt remembers how he sent Greg home the first time. He can visualize the paradoxical gateway, delicate as the film of a soap bubble, through which his sibling had been able to pass from the Unknown to their home-world. Red, the girl he’d nearly murdered, had dropped through a portal just like it in the swamp. Greg is in unimaginable peril here with one Beast seeking revenge and another Beast constantly battling the urge to steal his soul, so obviously the _only_ option is to get him the hell out of this place. Wirt should seek the seam that belongs to Greg and guide him there. They don’t have the luxury of making up for all their lost time, all the holidays Wirt missed, the mending of grief and past friction left between them. Greg has to _go._

Except—to Wirt’s horror—there _is_ no gateway for Greg this time.

Greg is trapped here. 

Distantly, his link to Beatrice burns with livewire intensity… and it’s getting worse. Leading her to Greg is off the table, because that will lead the _ravens_ —the first Beast—to Greg, and it’s no use trying to explain this to Beatrice. Wirt had already _tried_ that, and when he started forming those vital words that evil-infected half of himself had reared up and hacked into him, cutting him off—

Why can’t he fix anything?!

His restlessness veers him from aspens to maples to alders, milkweed to goldenrod and the pointillated gleam of stars. The Unknown reverberates with his anxiety. All of his frustration ripples relentlessly inward, outward while the hours pass, and when the reluctant Beast manages to pinpoint some of his skin-crawling agitation as the fault of _sacrifices_ calling out to him, his patience snaps.

_You will take him to̹̯ ̞t̜̬͍ḥ̹̤e ̣̫E̜̜͕d̫̫e̥̫̜l̼w̝̻o̥̭͎o̬̖d, and give me the sacrifice that I am owed._

These blood offerings in The Beast’s name need to STOP.

Wirt rejects the first sacrifice his fury intersects by directing an explosion of verdure around the slain sheep’s skinned remains. The battered meat and all the sigils surrounding it are erased by tenacious weeds—which swallow the rest of the witch's land and her dilapidated hovel with thorns and thistles and serrated leaves.

More mutilated animal offerings are dealt with the same way. Ruin rather than reward falls upon those who still think they can appeal to the forest god for malevolent power, who continue to kill despite Wirt's repeated scorn. Some sacrificial grounds are so clotted with rot that the weeds erupt blackened from the spoiled earth. Others are too fresh for Wirt to waste; his call for retribution brings nocturnal predators and scavengers from their nightly hunts to feast upon The Caretaker's gift. It is an exhausting process, taking chunks of Wirt's energy and heart, but his ire has a will of its own. 

Is it not enough that he’s terrified for Greg? That he’s actively harming Beatrice by protecting his brother? All Wirt wants is a damned _break!_

There's only one human sacrifice among the rest of the offal. The unresponsive young man is not yet dead, so Wirt asks a doe to carry him to the closest town away from the warlock's cabin. Her hooves have hardly left the property when Wirt commands honey locust trees to ram up along all sides of the abode, effectively trapping the warlock inside.

Wirt stalks into the woods just as the criminal wakes, screaming, to the trees' brutally clustered spikes breaking his windows. He's lucky The Beast didn't drag him out of his home and entomb him in an Edelwood for his atrocious acts—

 _Un̔g̜r̭a͓te̱f͛u͚l̝̽ wͅh̬e̥lp͒._ The voice is in his cranium and the fear-perfumed environment. _Those weren't y̖o͓u̹r̰ c͔o͚ṉt̼ra͚c̜tͅs̪ to break._

It isn't an Edelraven who stares down its beaks at him from the branches of an ash. This is a great horned owl made overlarge and ghastly from the oil saturating its body, leaking over the branch its talons clutch. Wirt must turn back and claim the dying young man for his forest to renew the agreement—

"They wanted to appeal to The Beast," Wirt responds caustically. "I'm pretty sure the reigning Beast is _me._ "

Passionate hatred radiates from the Edelowl. Wirt is worn to scraps by his destruction of sacrifices but he squares up, fists clenched, in case the deformed bird attacks. 

It restrains itself. _You've learned nothing about ba̐r̈̀g͌̎ǎín̑in̈́̎g̀ from your time on the throne, Ū͈s̝u̹͊rͭ̂p͗̌ê̓r̃̉. A clever deal could save your wo̒r̰th͖̏l̓e̥̯ss̹̎ ḻi͐f̈e̓ someday._

"Is that why you're still here—clinging to other things like a parasite? Great advice. Thanks for the tip." There are more sites to raze. He could ditch the former Beast and check Greg or Beatrice. If there’s an Edelowl, there might be Edelravens, and the gashes in Wirt’s skin from their attack this morning have not healed. It would be stupid to stay here. He turns from the infected owl...

 _You've already ma̻d̮̎e̼̐ o̱ne co͕ň̈t͉ṛ̱a̬c̈́̊t̟._ The viscous purr sticks Wirt in place. _Is it stupidity or pride that prevents you from ta͎k̤in̳̼g̻̣ aͥd̍vanta̗̹g̗̀e̪ͥ ̙o̎̓f ͚mo̫̖r͔e̹?_

“I don't make contracts," Wirt seethes, training his glower on a patch of violets. "Especially not with murderers.”

The Edelowl chortles, its unnatural hoot tunneling into the base of Wirt’s abdomen. _Perhaps a g̯utl͍e̹ss̺, ỉns̖i̜͐gǹ̆if͓i̥c͛a̺n͉t̤ **we̽a͓kl͉i̻n̐g** does not possess the stomach necessary for such dealings… but the **true** Beast thrives off of them. My congregation is eager to collect on o̗uͅr͕ ̟ȃ͔g͓r̠̾e͈̓e̼̼m̘e͉ṉt͔, whelp—whether or not you wish to honor it._

Wirt whirls on his nemesis. “T͕he̮ý͎'̣ll͎ ̯gi̬̎vë́ ̬up͋. When they get it through their heads that y͋ôu̱'re͂ n͋̂ö̞͕t̐ co͆̉ṃ̽̚in̬͔g̣̉ ba͒c̠k, that you can’t give them p͑o̐ẅe̐r̈ anymore, or _whatever the hell it is they want,_ they’ll stop—” 

_They will not. Haven’t you noticed, boy? There are many who eagerly await the day that t͎h̰è̈̆ F̜a̠̪lse̜̾ B̠e͊ä́s̖t͙ **falls.** And you will fall. You cannot resist the void’s thrall forever._

It plummets toward him, massive wingspan shielding the sky. Wirt dodges and arrows into the wind, into the silvery trickle of streams, and camps there through dawn.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

There’s a blueberry bush outside the wolves’ den when Greg opens his eyes. His new best friends are sniffing at it, intrigued, and prick their ears in awe when Greg stuffs a whole handful into his mouth. “D’you want any?” he politely asks Sugar-Butt, offering his purple-stained palm. Sugar-Butt gingerly licks his fingertips and loses interest. “Okay—more for me!”

Everything is cotton candy colored this morning. Greg scrambles out of the den the rest of the way and stretches, shaking out the static in his legs, and sucks in a deep bracing breath. “Wirt!” he yells. Corolla and Daniel bay with him. “Are you back yet? Wirt? Hellooooo? Where _is_ that sneaky brother-o-mine?”

Greg isn’t aware that Wirt has visited him from the blueberry and the dandelions and the broad patch of strawberries nearby, obsessively monitoring his safety. He doesn’t know that Wirt has done the same for Beatrice between wrecking more sacrifices and avoiding the ghost of the old Beast. Greg can’t possibly comprehend how tired Wirt is, how strenuously stressed after the Edelowl shook his bruised confidence, how frantic to search for Greg’s door when there isn’t one. None of that is relevant when Wirt said he’d be back and he’s _not._

“We better go look for him, Boss,” Greg tells the largest wolf. “You lead the way. Follow his scent, boy! Or girl!”

The alpha tolerates Greg skipping about fifty yards from the den. She herds him around the woods in a loose ring, and picks him up by the back of his pants like an unruly puppy when he tries to wander any farther. Daniel and Corolla tussle with him. Sugar-Butt beats him in a race. He rides on Boss’s back while the pack patrols their territory, shouting for Wirt as they go, and eats a lunch of nuts and berries that Wirt must have gathered for him before he darted off on more Beast business. 

“How come we haven’t found him?” Greg asks the head wolf, who he renames Granny on account of her loving disposition—just like the wolf in that adopted Little Red Riding Hood after her grandmother went missing in that weird story. “We looked so many places. Did Wirt get lost on his way back?”

Boss-Granny rests her chin on his head. Greg gets lost in thought till Sugar-Butt challenges him to another race, and he’s so engrossed in beating that no-good cheater that the setting sun surprises him. He claps his hands to his chubby face-cheeks in consternation. The day is almost over! The sun came up and is going down and Wirt is still lost! Jeez, Greg is the worst rescuer ever… downright shameful. Zero success rate. Disheartened, he heads back to the den with Granny, faintly optimistic that Wirt will be there waiting for him.

“Hey—where’s everybody going?” Granny pulls up short at the den’s mouth, muzzle pointing toward the red disc of the sun. Abruptly she bolts into the undergrowth with Sugar-Butt and Corolla, leaving Daniel behind with Greg. The omega wolf whines at their receding tails; Greg pats him comfortingly on the back. “Aw, sorry buddy. Nobody likes having a babysitter, but I promise not to put you to bed too early and I’ll let you eat all the snacks you want. Maybe they’re bringing Wirt home! A REAL rescue mission!” 

He busies himself picking wildflowers and tucking them into Daniel’s shaggy ruff. Once it’s too dark for that, he lays on his back to gaze up at the stars. Wirt did this sometimes in their backyard, when he was in one of his many thinking moods. Greg was not allowed to interrupt Wirt when he did this, except a single magical night last July when the fireflies were out and Wirt felt more cheerful. He’d asked Greg if he wanted to learn the names of all the constellations, and wasn’t mad when Greg made up a few constellations instead. “Let’s find the Broken Snake,” Greg suggests to his lupine companion, pillowing his head on Daniel’s side. “Or the whale with the planet on her back. Oh! I could name one after you! ‘Daniel the Wolf.’ That’d be the coolest one.”

Greg invents a constellation for Daniel and one for Wirt, and two for Beatrice (one for her bluebird-self, and one for her human-self). He eventually dozes off on Daniel’s pelt… and flinches awake when Daniel suddenly pushes to his paws, hackles spiked and growling at a hidden point in the forest. 

“Who is it?” Greg scrubs muzzily at his eyeballs. “Antler-Bro?”

It is silent. Scary-silent, like the moment in a horror movie before a vampire or mummy lunges out at the good guy. 

Twin spotlights shutter open and blaze in the shadows between the trees. A canine muzzle parts the tall ferns and yawns, wide enough for Greg to stand inside. The creature that emerges into the clearing is bigger than the monster-dog that Rusty turned into when he ate a black turtle, bigger than a bear, and when it swivels its focus onto Greg it bellows loud enough to make his skeleton quake. 

“Boss?” Greg asks, wavering. “Granny?”

Daniel snarls and gallops at the monster full throttle. He leaps at the behemoth’s terrible, malformed face, and both animals roar as they’re knocked backward into the bushes and out of Greg’s sight. The little boy has never heard such a blood-curdling chorus of viciousness; the splinter of breaking wood and barbaric crashes of impact and gutteral lupine howls propel him into the muffled coziness of the den.

“Wirt, I need you,” Greg whispers into the fur-lined earth. “I need you real bad, a bully-wolf is hurting Daniel—”

Searing light inundates the den. The titanic mutant sneers at Greg from the entrance, its head far too mammoth to fit inside, and red-streaked oil drools from between its crooked yellow teeth like saliva. The hairs on its pelt are lusterless shades of dirty charcoal. It scours at the den’s outer walls with a bony paw, and its limbs are all wrong, stretched unnaturally thin and spidery under a frame that has bent out of all but the barest sense of wolf-ness. Oil bleeds from parts in its matted fur whenever it flexes its sinews. With a snarl it forces itself closer—

And Wirt is there to catch it. 

His older brother surges from the earth like a dervish, casting debris from himself in his haste to protect Greg from the hulking oil-wolf—which has unhinged its vast jaws crocodile-wide, so wide that Wirt has to spread his arms to their full span to stop those jaws from slamming shut. The cords in Wirt’s back snap taut; obsidian drops like a tangible weight over his body; from behind The Beast Greg cannot see what is happening, but after a second of struggle—of mandible-muscles straining and fangs framing Wirt like stalactites and stalagmites—the hunting creature’s growls break into frenzied squeals. 

“Doͨn̒'t͉̑ lo̒o̫k̿ ̾,” Wirt orders. He says it like Mom or Dad would say it—scary-calm, steady with the assurance that he will be obeyed—so Greg covers his eyes.

A sickening crunch. The squealing cuts off. A thump rocks the ground from an enormous dead weight.

Wirt breathes harshly into the following hush, his exhales scratchy as the hooked side of velcro. “Can I look now?” Greg asks in a careful whisper, huddled in the deepest part of the den.

There’s no reply in the negative. Tentatively, Greg slides his palms down his face and crawls on his hands and knees into the open air. Wirt’s shoulders are trembling now, those muted jumps that come with crying, and Greg steps around his sibling to see what became of the abominable wolf…

It is less meat and more mud, its inky flesh and fur seeping into the ground. The eyes that had burned at Greg are twin pits in its ashen skull. Mushrooms sprout in the spaces between its bones, devouring rot that flowers will not touch. It becomes smaller as Greg watches it decay, collapsing on itself, and he’s sure there’s a strip of black that stands out against the murky hairs of its spine. 

Greg knows what death is. Plenty of people have muttered about it when they think he isn’t listening. He’s heard of people’s pets passing away, and he’s seen roadkill on the street and the poor bird-corpses in the forest by the mill… but he’s never seen something _killed._ He’s never looked at something dead, and stood next to the thing that _made_ it dead. Confusion unmoors his brain and turns his thoughts slippery; one hand goes to rest on Wirt’s shuddery shoulder, because Greg thinks Wirt needs comfort more than he does, but he feels a fearful drop in his tummy like he’s breaking a rule.

“Are you okay?” 

Wirt spooks and glances at him as if he forgot Greg was there. He rushes to scoot Greg from the scene of the crime. “I told you not to look,” The Beast reprimands. 

“Was that Granny? What happened to her?” Greg is so shaken that he doesn’t pull free when Wirt grabs him by the arm and yanks him away from the wolf den, despite the fact Wirt is moving too fast for Greg to keep up on his shorter legs. 

“He… f̆o̝u̓n͈d ̒y͔o̻u͂,” Wirt hisses. “Don’t know how. I was…distracted, t͐o͌o m̓̈́a̭̱nỳ̈ s̙̑a̩̤crifi̒ces̾, asked for help—” He bites his tongue and puts on that pitiful _I ruined everything_ expression he reverts to whenever he makes a humiliating mistake. “They obeyed me. I t-told the predators to clean up, they m-must have gone right into a trap… I thought they’d stay here with you…”

“I’m confused,” Greg admits timorously. Wirt’s eyes are traffic-light-yellow and swimming with tears. “Are we gonna figure out where Corolla and Daniel and—”

“Can’t sleep here,” Wirt growls over him. “S-sorry, Greg. I w-want to keep you s̳a̦f̊ĕ. I promise. Trust me, p-p̥le̝ȃse̋.”

“I trust you,” says Greg. But trust doesn’t make the icky squirmy feeling in his stomach go away.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Beatrice nails the ravens that besiege her with Calvin’s slingshot. Those she misses score her with their claws and stain her dress with their oil and then… die, crumbling to carrion as if they’d always been made of assorted gore and not living, screeching birds. She’d gag if she weren’t worried about more urgent matters—like how she’s dying from Wirt’s link-curse.

For the first twenty-four hours after she beat The Beast up and he marooned her, Beatrice could only slump onward by propping her weight on a sturdy stick and hobbling like an old woman. Each breath is like dragging in a lungful of water. Her skin is blotched pink and red. Her hair looks as if she dunked her head in a river, pasted wetly to her scalp and her neck with sweat. She loses her sense of direction entirely and traipses with no purpose, dependent on random signs to keep her going: a hoofprint lit by a sunbeam; a thatch of blue-eyed grass flowers and irises winding through a meadow like a path; a flash of triple-hued eyes that wait for her temperature to dip _just below inferno_ so she can run for them, cussing asthmatically, before evanescing. 

“Wait!” Beatrice orders, bids, begs. She is getting worse each time The Beast leads her along and leaves her alone. He’s keeping her barely alive, and Beatrice can’t trust that it’s so she’ll reunite with Greg. This might be a demented pastime for The Beast, a diversion, and Beatrice doesn’t have the choice to turn back.

A day or two passes. Or three. Or four. Beatrice travels until she collapses. She forgets where she’s already been and slogs through hysterical heart attacks retracing her steps. She repeats Greg’s name, Andrew’s, Bram’s. She sobs for her father. But no one comes.

Beatrice gives up following a line of bright orange marigolds after she faints in the midst of all the ruffled petals. “Screw this.” Teetering on her feet, she labors a different way… and weeps like an infant at the smell of cooking meat sizzling in the twilight breeze. Someone is having dinner. Beatrice hasn’t eaten decent food since… when had she run from the mill, again?

She slobbers after the delicious scent of roast and does not register the cottage it’s coming from prior to knocking. The front door opening startles her into a defensive stance; however, the leporine face that greets her is kind, if not taken by surprise.

“Good evening,” says the rabbit-headed lady. She is snow white with ruby eyes; her ears are so long they are flush with her back; her dress is simple, meticulously handmade, and patched all over with different floral prints. "Can I help you?"

"I… I was…" Beatrice turns to properly absorb the rabbit's home. The cottage is adorable, though in need of some repair. An overgrown garden with rainbows of spring flowers surrounds the property and even inches up the cottage's sides. Aromatic smoke wafts from a crumbling chimney. "Sorry. I'm really hungry, and… sorry."

Embarrassed, Beatrice cringes into herself. The bunny laughs sweetly at her discomfort. 

"Please don't apologize. My sister always cooks too much stew for the both of us. We'd be happy to have a guest." The stranger steps aside and opens the door wider. Smiling. Welcoming.

"Are you sure?" Beatrice swallows, unable to disguise her desperation. She's so weary and hungry and it would be so nice to rest in an actual house on actual furniture with _food_ in her vacant stomach.

The rabbit-woman waves her in with a dainty paw. "Oh yes, quite sure. I'll set you a place at the table."

Beatrice, made docile by illness, bows into the cottage. The inside is decorated with bouquets from the garden, lace doilies, and family portraits of other lapin-esque folk. A basket of knitting waits on steps to the second floor. The interior smells swooningly of stew. If they'd let her, Beatrice would flop on the wood floor and sleep.

Her hostess brings her to a small round table that looks as if it's been passed down for generations. While Beatrice sits, the bunny flounces into the kitchen; excited murmuring and a few girlish squeals issue from near the stove, but Beatrice is so fixated on the steaming bowl the second rabbit lady brings to her that she's not listening.

Beatrice forgoes use of a spoon to hold the bowl with both hands and slurp the contents until she has to come up for air. Relieved tears glisten in her eyes. "Delicious," she says, emphatic.

"You like it?" grins the cook. She is identical to her sister: the same pale fur, the same red eyes, the same benign tone of voice. "Fern and I just _love_ having visitors, don't we Fern?"

"They give you a chance to show off your recipes, Clover," teases the first rabbit. "It's been months since somebody complimented your stew!"

"You liked it just fine when I made it last time," giggles Clover. "Can I get you another bowl, traveler? It appears you could use one, to bolster your strength."

"Yes." Beatrice can't believe she inhaled her food like that, but she is beyond caring. If she were home with her family, her mom might have made her soup like this, confident that the only cure Beatrice requires is a home-cooked meal. "God, yes. Absolutely."

Clover swings back with two bowls; Fern has one for herself, and joins her sister and Beatrice at the table with a shuffle of her skirts. The twins—for they must be twins, to look that alike—pick up their spoons simultaneously. Beatrice observes with jittery fascination as they cool their stew and sip it with choreographed synchronicity… then glance at her, reflections of each other. 

"Are you far from home?" inquires Fern. 

"Not that far," replies Beatrice. She stirs her broth and swallows in a civilized manner, calmer. To Clover she asks, "What's in this? I thought I smelled meat on my way here, but…" 

"We're vegetarians," Clover demurs, dabbing her whiskers with a napkin. ( _Duh,_ Beatrice mentally berates herself. _Rabbits._ ) "Perhaps you discerned the mushrooms? They're very savory."

"Oh. Yeah." Blushing, Beatrice dips another spoonful. Chopped celery, carrots, potatoes, thickly-sliced mushrooms, and translucent pearl onions bob in the bowl. She should make small talk. Use her atrophied manners. These ladies were generous enough to take her under their roof and feed her and Beatrice no better than a stray mutt for all her social graces. 

Greg would be on his third bowl by now. Wirt would be awkward but thankful. Beatrice's throat swells.

"Traveling alone? You don’t look fit to journey, much less stroll around a garden." Fern takes a drink of water at the same time as Clover. Their carmine stares haven't wavered from Beatrice. 

"I'm… following someone." Beatrice chews a thumbnail-sized onion; it pops in her mouth. The flavor is saltier than she anticipated, but not unpleasant, and the contentment of a full stomach has shaved the edge off her previous delirium. 

“But they're not with you?” The bunny twins say it concurrently. Beatrice is glad that Andrew and Bram never sync up this seamlessly; it’s a seriously creepy habit. 

She misses them bitterly.

“I can take care of myself,” Beatrice retorts, a little sullen. She pretends to examine bunches of dried herbs hanging from the kitchen ceiling; they give off a musty smell that reminds her of fur or leather, but that might be the lusciousness of the stew.

“We ladies need to watch out for ourselves, don’t we sister?” simpers Fern. 

“Not everyone is as accommodating as we are,” agrees Clover, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t believe the state of some poor dears we’ve seen. The forest just isn’t safe…”

“You can say that again,” Beatrice grumbles. She stabs at a potato with her spoon. It flips out of her bowl, slides across the table, and plunks onto the floor. “Oh, shoot, sorry—”

“Butterpaws!” the twins trill. As they twitter to each other, elated by their guest, Beatrice leans from her chair to pick the potato chunk up. The wood grain under the table sports a rust-tinged stain. A past guest probably dumped their tomato stock on accident; this makes her feel a tad better about her clumsiness.

“Would you stay the night?” It’s hard to tell who proposed the question when Beatrice didn’t see who spoke. She sits up again and breathes through a spell of lightheadedness. 

“Please consider.” Oh, it was Clover. She twirls one of her ears absently, like how Audrey twirls her hair. “You remind us of our sister Rose… she was such a delicate one, and we’d never forgive ourselves if we let you out there in your ailing state.”

“You’re vulnerable,” adds Fern. “Creatures like The Beast would snap you right up.”

“He snapped up poor Rose, didn’t he Fern?” laments Clover.

“He did, Clover,” sniffles Fern. “We used to have such a nasty Beast.”

Beatrice’s brain still feels too fuzzy from bending at the waist. She props her elbows on the table and cradles her head in her hands, inhaling through her nose and exhaling from her mouth. Her tongue feels oddly coated and she prays that she isn’t about to puke from eating too fast. “H-hey… could I lay down somewhere, actually? I’m not… feeling so good…”

“I knew she was ill,” Fern tells Clover, subdued. “Doesn’t she look just awful?”

Clover peers up and down at Beatrice. Calculating. “So awful. She might not make it through tonight. Shall we care for her now?”

“Yes, let’s.”

“Oh _let’s._ ” 

Beatrice bangs her chin on the table, unable to lift the weight of her skull. She hasn’t breathed normally for over seventy-two hours or more but suddenly it’s much, much worse. Is this it? Has The Beast gone so far from her that her body is failing permanently?

The rabbits do not help Beatrice up when she falls from her chair. Instead they snigger, gleeful, smirking down at her with those sinister red irises.

“What the hell is h-happening? What did you… put in the stew? And...” Her stomach backflips. For a blink—an undulation of time—the cottage interior was not what she thought she saw. There are bones piled by the entrance. Skins drying on the walls. Dereliction, neglect, and these two harpies gaunt and greedy as they size her up.

Beatrice squeaks out a panicked gasp. “Darn it,” mutters Fern, disappointed. “I’d thought the illusion would last longer.”

“It isn’t your fault, sister,” croons Clover, patting Fern’s paw across the table. “The Beast will certainly like _this_ one better than what we’ve offered him lately. I’ve got a good feeling about her.”

“B-Beast?” Beatrice slurs. She tries to stand but swerves sideways, knocking her bowl to the hardwood on her way down. Broth splashes between the slats in the floor. Vegetables roll every which way—except they aren’t vegetables, they’re wads of meat and gelatin and _eyeballs,_ small as marbles as they bounce—

“He’s a picky one, this young Beast. They say animal sacrifices just won’t _do._ ” A paw locks around Beatrice’s wrist and pulls her toward the back door. Beatrice’s stricken stare jumps to the dead coneys hung by their hind legs where she thought there’d been herbs, the animal bones where there’d been saccharine chachkies, the bizarre symbols cross-stitched onto throw pillows instead of wholesome platitudes. Clover heads into the kitchen and bustles after her twin with a cleaver better suited for severing limbs than chopping vegetables. Beatrice struggles in Fern’s hold, gargling threats, yet the rabbit simply clucks at her and uses her free paw to yank up fistfulls of Beatrice’s sweat-tangled hair.

“This isn’t personal, dear,” soothes Clover, switching the cleaver back and forth from one paw to the other. “We used to be able to get what we needed from whatever we trapped in the backyard. It was a humane arrangement, wasn’t it Fern?”

“Very humane,” concurs the witch towing Beatrice onto a bare dirt patch. 

Beatrice switches from promises of killing the bunny twins to begging for her life. They snicker at her futile distress; Fern wrenches Beatrice’s arms behind her back and whispers into the struggling redhead’s ear. “Try not to flail around so much. You’re not supposed to die before Lord Beast finds you.”

“Straighten your legs,” Clover advises, lifting the cleaver. “I’ll only remove a foot. Only one! It’ll be our lucky charm.”

Fern laughs helplessly at this black irony. “Oh, sister, how funny— _AIIIEE!_ ”

Blackberry vines rupture the soil and bind the rabbit-headed women so rapidly they cannot take a step to escape or protect themselves. Clover is constricted with her arms still holding the cleaver shoulder-level; Fern releases Beatrice to rend the vines off herself, but the wickedly thorned ropes braid round and round until her petrified eyes are the only parts of her uncovered. Both of the witches shriek in that horrific pitch between human and animal, rabbit-screams, and while she’s unscathed by the voracious blackberry canes Beatrice army-crawls to the fence of the garden.

More blackberries spiral into the gloam as she scrapes by on her belly and dumps herself over the fence. They swarm over the flowers and whip up and over the cottage like pythons smashing the life from their prey. Fern and Clover are thrashing tumbleweeds, beseeching mercy from The Beast. When no glowing eyes brighten the evening, they resort to incoherent howling.

They were going to sacrifice Beatrice. They were going to hack that cleaver into her ankle and let her bleed to death waiting for their woodland god, expecting a reward for their loyalty. How many other _psychos_ are out there trying to do the same?!

Beatrice roars obscenities at the twins while she limps into the woods. She spits to clear her mouth of the stew’s gruesome flavor. Energy sluggishly refills her body, metabolizing the mystery compound Clover had drugged her with. There’s no doubt that The Beast is responsible for the briars ingesting that occult cottage, but Beatrice bets the foot she could’ve lost that the only reason she’s jogging into the night and not being torn apart by thorns is because she managed to get out. Any slower, and…

“Are you out there?” Beatrice croaks into the moonshine. “Wirt?”

No answer. Her sole company is the chirrup of frogs serenading the berry-scented night. Beatrice reflexively goes to tighten the strap of her travel pack, and moans in disappointment. She left the rest of her supplies in that damned little house like an brainless moron, and there’s no way she’s visiting again without a machete to cut down those vines _and_ those witch-sisters. The last item she has left is the slingshot, hooped to her belt. 

Determination grinds her jaw. Beatrice has brought down The Beast with less.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Greg has tried to make the best out of his week with Wirt. He started playing Hide-and-Seek when Wirt disappears for Beast Things; Wirt is always “It,” and Greg always finds a super secret spot to wait for him. He’s hidden behind bushes. Ferns. Big rocks. A napping bear, once. Thus far, Greg has lost every round. He’s not figured out how to bust his older brother for cheating yet, but he hasn’t given up hope that he’ll soon narrow down the BEST hiding place—somewhere Wirt will never think to look, and then Wirt will have to yell “Olly Olly Oxenfree!” and admit defeat.

Another game Greg enjoys distracting Wirt with is “Can He Grow That? Let’s Find Out!” Wirt unfortunately wins this ingenious game more often than Greg appreciates; however, Greg _did_ manage to stump Wirt a single round by asking if The Beast could make a pineapple grow in the Unknown (the answer is an extremely confused and doubtful “no”). Greg’s proud of that victory.

Wirt isn’t a playful or outgoing guy by nature, which is fine, because Greg likes Wirt exactly how he is. It’s not a big deal that Wirt isn’t as invested in Hide-and-Seek or Can He Grow That? because Greg is used to creating his own fun. Greg is worried for Wirt, though… lately The Beast reappears after Beast Business worse for wear. There’s constantly new cuts or bruises on the human parts of his flesh, and nicks in the barkish parts that ooze black sap. His face resembles a Halloween skeleton mask, with hollow cheekbones and dark circles around his candle-yellow eyes. Greg has caught Wirt in his Beast shadows frequently. Does Wirt have a cold? Is he sneaking off to get into fights, like the big boys down the street that Mom warns Greg to avoid? _That_ doesn’t sound like the Wirt Greg knows and loves…

When Wirt asks Greg to go find some raspberries for breakfast one pretty morn, Greg dives into the forest without a second glance. He forgets that Wirt could _grow_ raspberries in the same spot they’d slept in and tackles his assignment with cheer. It’s a shame the wolves aren’t here to help him sniff out more treats; as an homage, Greg yips and howls during his hunt. “Raspberries, raspberries. Do wolves eat raspberries? Whoa, a woodpecker—”

The woodpecker sighting leads to a duck sighting leads to Greg splashing his boots in a brook and then recalling that he needs to bring Wirt breakfast. “Doy! We can play Can He Grow It! Brilliant idea, Werewolf-Greg. Maybe he’s unpuzzled how to grow a pineapple!” That would GUARANTEE a great day! Wirt typically feels sunnier when he succeeds at a task. 

“Wirt! Hear my idea! You should grow pineapple for breakfast—Wirt?” Greg returns to the campsite and stumbles upon Wirt weeping, knees hugged to his chest to make himself small. “You okay, Brother-O-Mine?”

Wirt startles, snorting up mucus in a failed effort to pretend he isn’t crying. “D-did you find any blackberries?”

“You mean raspberries?”

“I… nevermind.” Wirt buries his face in the crook of his arm and sighs. Some of the petals on his antlers spiral off like confetti.

“Are you a sleepy Beast?” This wouldn’t be the first time Greg caught his older brother with tears in his eyes and the excuse _I’m just tired, Greg. So tired._ “Maybe you should take a rest.”

“Can’t. I… I h-have to find your door. Where _is_ it?” Wirt hits the heel of his hand firm against his forehead. Frustration frays his voice. “Greg… how did you get here? What happened?”

“I dreamed.”

“You dreamed last night. I heard you t-talk in your sleep. But if you’re dreaming _now…_ you can w-wake up. People don’t go to sleep for _d-days_ Greg—that’s a coma.” Wirt’s chest hitches and his sobs wrack him harder, anxiety filling him up and up, overflowing. “What happened to you, really? Do you remember? What—what happened to _me?!_ ”

“Well,” Greg starts uncertainly. “You got stuck in the lake, I think. Wayyyy back on Halloween.”

“Wh-what? The lake?”

“Back on Halloween, when you sent me home, I came out of the lake. But you didn’t follow me out. I was wonderin’ what took you so long, you old so-and-so.”

“What lake?” Wirt sounds scared and confused and _lost,_ just as he had the fateful moment they realized they were walking in a forest they’d never been in before and with no memory of how they got there. “I didn’t… there was a d-door, last time, in the woods, I sent y-y-you through it…” 

A gutted noise tangles Wirt’s throat. He chokes, “We died.”

“ _What?_ ” It’s Greg’s turn to sound incredulous. He laughs aloud, stunned. “Dead people don’t breathe!” They also don’t dream, or give their brothers piggyback rides, or think up poems. Greg laughs again.

But Wirt is not amused by the absurdity of what he’s said. His eyes pulse dark indigo, a listless shade that doesn’t belong in the pastel softness of dawn. The grass and wildflowers that grow where he sits wither and die. His posture caves in, limp and lifeless and so motionless that if Greg had not been speaking to him he’d think this Wirt-lump was a sculpture.

“I’m sorry, Greg.” A raw whisper. “I’ve been a _horrible_ brother to you. All I do is… m-make things worse. And now you’re… y-you’re… oh, _god._ ”

“Hey. I’m not dead, goofball. I fell asleep at home, cross my heart and hope to die.” Oops, bad wording. Greg pokes his tongue from the corner of his mouth in thought. “Cross my heart and hope to… uh…”

“Greg, are you _sure_ you just fell asleep? Are you absolutely positive? You didn’t hit your head—or get hurt, or lost somewhere?”

“Naw, I put on my jammies and thought real hard about coming back here. I’ve been visiting for months and months—didn’t you know?” Greg counts all the times he’d dreamed before, the sensation of being trapped in a fishbowl and unable to touch Wirt no matter how valiant his efforts. Wirt never seemed to notice he was there; no wonder his poor big brother was having such a hard time believing him. “I dreamed of you with Beatrice’s family, that’s how come I know all their names. Andrew and Benjamin and Audrey and—”

Wirt is wiping his eyes, sniffles subsiding. “Bram, Greg. His name is Bram.”

“I dreamed of you growing a vegetable garden near that animal schoolhouse we went to,” Greg continues, encouraged by his sibling’s calming hiccups. “And! That one time you got your antlers stuck on that laundry line and all the underwear—”

“Okay, _okay._ ” Wirt grimaces, his face and the centers of his eyes blooming pink. “I believe you. I n-never told anybody about the… the _laundry incident_ so…”

His chest keeps jerking around tiny, tearful gasps, but Wirt has relaxed considerably. When Greg springs a hug on him, short arms flung about his neck, Wirt only struggles to free himself from strangulation and adjusts their embrace to a more comfortable one.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” The Beast murmurs tenderly. “But… I won’t stop looking for a way to bring you back home. You can’t stay here forever, Greg. Mom and Dad will worry if— _wha_ —did you just lick me?!”

Greg waggles his stuck-out tongue. “Yeth.”

“You’re _disgusting!_ ”

“Can a dead person do that?” Greg challenges. He wiggles closer, guffawing like mad, trying to lick Wirt again, and then trying to tickle him when that fails. His plan backfires spectacularly when Wirt rumbles playfully and stuffs Greg into a thatch of luxurious, freshly-sprouted grass; his raptor-talons zero in on all Greg’s ticklish spots with expert precision.

“I wanna tag in my stuntman!” Greg hollers. “This cage match is bonkers! Throw ‘im out, Ref!”

“Who’re you tagging in?” Wirt taunts. He magics a dandelion by Greg’s ear and boops Greg’s nose with it. Greg, no coward, chomps the dandelion’s yellow head off and eats it. 

“Beatrice,” grins Greg smugly through a mouthful of petals. It’s not the right name to say. The laughter drains from Wirt’s face and he settles back on his haunches, giving his younger sibling room to sit up. “Aw… do you miss her?”

Wirt nods wretchedly. “I’m a bad friend,” he mutters.

“Then why don’t you go get her? Is it safe yet?” Greg scuttles over and sits so that he’s back-to-back with Wirt. The bumps that stud Wirt’s spine aren’t significantly comfortable to lean against, but Wirt yelled at him for pretending to play those bumps like a xylophone yesterday, so Greg stopped. “I liked it when we were all a team.”

“Those days are over, Greg,” Wirt vows. “I don’t think we'll ever be that close again.” 

Greg knocks the toes of his boots together. He muses about all the items he squirreled away at home that embody _Wirt,_ those priceless treasures that did not replace his brother but made missing him not as awful. “Too bad you can’t give Beatrice a little piece of yourself to carry with her, in case she’s lonely.”

Wirt tilts his head. “Hmm?”

“A little piece of yourself, to keep Beatrice company,” Greg explains. “Like a locket, or a photograph, or a love letter—”

“Or a lantern.” Wirt says it deep and thoughtful. Then a growl judders from his vocal cords. “Did you say _'love letter'_ just now?”

“Did you say ‘lantern’?” Greg parries. “Is Beatrice afraid of the dark?”

Wirt hums, fond and sad and maybe somewhat guilty. On his way to his hooves he musses Greg’s hair and opens his claws to help Greg up. For a heartbeat his preternatural eyes are rosy. “No," he asserts. "She’s not afraid of anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Whiggity for helping me name the equine cinnamon roll [Holly Hotchkiss.](https://imgur.com/Y5NPZ4i) That link will take you to a little sketch I did of Appleonia's darlin. Whiggity also named Granny. My youngest sister named the rabbit twins. I like to ~~mine other people for ideas~~ involve others in my writing process.
> 
> "Xath, how come none of this crap is linear?" Well, reader, because roller coasters are more fun with loops. 😎 I have reasons for all my back-and-forth leaps, and I try to tuck tidbits of critical information in with each installation.
> 
> Teeth in the final chapter!


	3. 🙞Light🙜

On the one hand, Wirt is glad to have a goal for Beatrice. There’s no surefire way to know if giving her the Dark Lantern will fix their tether problem until he actually tries it, but an uncertain plan is better than no plan at all. It’s definitely better than leaving endless, aimless trails of lily and marigold for Beatrice to follow while he figures out how to proceed. 

Granted, leading Beatrice to the Dark Lantern is only one step of Wirt’s feeble plot. The Woodsman must be convinced to forfeit his burden to a girl who, at first glance, could be tricked or trapped by The Beast like any other maiden. Beatrice cannot acquire the lantern by chance or theft, because the Woodsman would hunt for The Beast’s soul forevermore—and the whole point of this plot is to free the old man, and Beatrice, decisively.

Beatrice has to prove to the Woodsman that she can handle the Dark Lantern and The Beast. She must show no allegiance to Wirt, no weakness, no mercy. She has to hate Wirt, so that the Woodsman cannot question her tenacity as a lantern-bearer and The Beast’s warden.

Well. Beatrice tried to choke him out a few days ago, so the hatred is already taken care of.

“Faster, Beastie-Bro! Time’s a-wastin’!”

“Sorry, sorry…”

The brothers leave their campsite at noon, before Wirt can lose his nerve. To say that Wirt is merely anxious about approaching the Woodsman would not do his dread justice. The old man loathes his guts, and has never hesitated to use brute force to drive The Beast away, so Wirt’s stomach is a bucket of bleach and ammonia as he and Greg chart their course for the Dark Lantern.

“Hey, Wirt, do you have stagefright?” Greg asks from Wirt’s shoulders. He’d pleaded for a piggyback ride until Wirt agreed, and Wirt is so in his own buzzing head right now Greg’s question actually startles him. 

“Stagefr-fright?” The Beast repeats. He clamps his tongue between his incisors. “Of course n-not. Why would I have stagefright?”  


“Because you’ve got a big audience,” Greg answers. And now Wirt can’t believe he managed to psyche himself out so much he’s been deaf to the bawdy racket of birdsong trilling from his antlers. 

Cardinals, robins, and several species of warblers compete for perches among Wirt’s candy-colored blooms. They must have picked up on their Lord’s agitated energy; when they note Wirt paying attention, all of them belt louder—to Greg’s absolute glee. The excited child begins imitating all the different calls (right in Wirt’s ear, of course) but Wirt embraces the noisy distraction. How could the Woodsman possibly call him a monster with a halo of birds and Greg going “twee-wee-twee!” on his back? What kind of monster looks so absurd?

The pair—or rather the chorus, counting the birds—make great time cutting through a buckeye grove. Wirt’s apprehension lends him speed; it’s almost as though the forest is pushing him forward, compressing itself like a spring to launch The Beast where he wishes to tread. It isn’t a sensation Wirt is familiar with… granted, he usually teleports when he goes long distances. Maybe this incredible swiftness is another Beast Thing he should learn to perfect.

They stop to feed Greg lunch. Wirt digs into his own thoughts again and only notices that he’s practically buried Greg in vegetables when his brother pipes up from behind a pile of lettuce that’s as tall as he is. 

“Does Beatrice like broccoli? Maybe we can save some of this stuff for her…” He gestures at a basketball-sized green floret with a carrot that he’s dusted the dirt off of. 

“We’re not looking for Beatrice,” Wirt sighs. He tosses a hefty head of lettuce toward some rabbits sniffing around his hooves. “She’s too mad at me.” 

“But I thought you were going to give her a lantern?”

“I am. I have to _get_ the lantern first.”

“Oh.” Greg offers the broccoli to a different rabbit; the animal lets him pet it while it nibbles its treat. “Are we goin’ to the lantern store or something?”

Wirt has been wary to outright mention the Woodsman. When Greg babbles about his first time in the Unknown, he babbles about animals in a schoolhouse band and ships sailing fields of wheat and beautiful autumn days. He never asks what happened to the old Beast. He never shows any sign that he recalls being trapped in a tree. Wirt is afraid that, at some point, he’ll accidentally open the Pandora’s Box of Greg’s trauma by triggering the wrong memory—and Wirt really, _really_ won’t be able to handle Greg feeling genuinely scared of him.

“It’s… my lantern,” Wirt mutters. “I… um… lost it.”

“If you know where it is, then how is it lost?” Greg feeds the rest of his broccoli to his adoring rabbit coterie. “Did somebody steal it?”

“Sort of—”

“We’re hunting a thief!” Greg shouts. The rabbits bolt, and Greg clenches his fists with an intense expression. “You shoulda told me somebody took something of yours, Wirt, you’re supposed to ask for help when you need help!”

Wirt grimaces at his stepfather’s words being thrown back at him from his younger sibling. “It’s all right, Greg, he’s been taking care of it—”

“Who’s been taking care of what?”

“My _lantern,_ Greg. Do you…” The Beast swallows. “Do you remember the Woodsman? Creepy old guy with a tophat and an axe?”

“ _The Beast is upon you!_ ” Greg’s imitation is both off-putting and hilarious. Wirt watches his brother’s face for a clue that Greg remembers the last time he would have seen the Woodsman, when roots had been burrowing into him as if his flesh were earth. But Greg is fine. 

“That’s the one,” Wirt affirms. “We’re going to see him. Not Beatrice.”

“But we’re going to see Beatrice after we get your lantern, right?”

“Right.”

“And the Woodsman stole your lantern?”

Wirt massages his temples. Is it weird that he missed these migraines? Over the winter he’d had nothing but the noise in his own skull and the sluggish snow-covered murmurs of the Unknown. There’d been nobody to reinforce his original identity, no little brother nagging him with constant questions and stories. A flash of himself as The Gravedigger dives behind his eyes like a raven’s shadow—detached, unfeeling, numb to the bodies he’d buried—and he reaches out to Greg for reassurance that this isn’t a long, vivid daydream he’s making up.

Greg high-fives the talons aiming for him. Wirt laughs out loud at the unexpected action, and his passenger birds break into music.

“So, what did that stealer Woodsman want with your lantern, anyhow?” Greg twists a ripe tomato off a vine climbing up a slender buckeye sapling and bites into it, exploding juice down his chin. “What else did he steal? Are we bringing him to justice, Officer Wirt?”

_Justice…_ Wirt frowns. He doesn’t know how long the Woodsman had been slaving to light the Dark Lantern before he and Greg showed up in the Unknown. Seasons? Years? He’d been duped by the first Beast into saving a soul that wasn’t his daughter’s, and continued his dark task purely out of spite for the current Beast. The Woodsman does not trust Wirt. He believes it’s his burden to keep the current Beast under control. He probably wouldn’t view a lanternless existence as _freedom_ so much as a loss of purpose or a personal failure. 

Wirt honestly has no idea how to convince the Woodsman to trade the lantern. And he has to figure it out _soon,_ because if he and Greg maintain their current pace then they’ll catch up to the old man by tonight. 

“I can beat him up for you,” Greg offers, picking another tomato. 

“No, that’s okay.” Wirt cannot approach the Woodsman the same way he’s done before… but he’s asked for his soul so many times in so many different ways he isn’t sure what else he can do. He’s begged, bartered, menaced. Every time he slinks off with his tail between his legs, daunted by the old man’s axe.

The Woodsman and Beatrice’s parents are the only people in this world that make Wirt feel like a powerless _boy,_ and not an all-powerful Beast.

“I could throw vegetables at him,” Greg suggests. He flings a cucumber like a boomerang and Wirt catches it out of its trajectory. Impressed, Greg throws another.  


“We’re not beating him up or throwing vegetables at him, Greg. And quit it—you’re wasting food.”

“Hmm… a puzzle. No wholluping or veggie-tossing. Intimidation is not the solution. We gotta stop approaching this the Beatrice Way.” Greg points a finger at Wirt as if _Wirt_ was the one proponating violence. “Whaddaya got for tradesies?”

“ _Tradesies?_ ”

Greg lifts a huge cauliflower over his head. “Like baseball cards and Halloween candy! If you give the Woodsman something really good, he’ll give you your lantern back. Owen Spunklemeyer stole my blue Hot Wheels racecar before Thanksgiving but he gave it back when I made him his _own_ Rock Facts rock. Except mine is better, ‘cause it’s the original.”

Wirt takes the cauliflower from Greg and studies it. He’s never thought to give the Woodsman a simple gift… he hadn’t quite mastered his ability to call things from the soil at the start of spring, and trading the Dark Lantern for a bouquet sounds totally asinine. He can visualize what Greg is going for, though. The Beast can try, one more time, to make a good impression. _See, Woodsman, how generous I am? How non-threatening and gentle? I bet the old Beast never gave you more squash than you could carry._

“That’s not a bad plan, Greg,” Wirt smiles. “We could trade for my lantern. I like my odds, since I have my secret weapon with me.”

Greg is trying to feed the birds in Wirt’s antlers some walnuts he crumbled in his hands. “You have a secret weapon?” he asks, all wide-eyed innocence and boyish curiosity and wholesome charisma. 

“Yep,” says Wirt. “I’ve got you.”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The sun sets. While its fading glow tints the horizon jade-green and goldenrod, Wirt kneels for Greg to hop off his back and puts his claws on his little brother’s shoulders to focus him. “Remember the plan?” he asks, serious. 

“Just be myself,” Greg chirps. “Win him over, that dumb sucker.”

“Don’t call the Woodsman a ‘dumb sucker’ to his face,” coaches Wirt. “We want him to like us. He’s… he’s not a big fan of me, but I know he’ll have a soft spot for you. Everybody likes you. That’s your superpower.”

“Such responsibility,” Greg mutters soberly, staring at his hands.

Wirt plunks parsnips, beets, carrots, and a fistfull of collared greens in Greg’s arms. The Woodsman is down a steep hill by a lean-to he constructed against a white oak, poking at a campfire with the Dark Lantern at his boots. He doesn’t know that the boys are just above him. The Beast has the advantage of surprise.

“Go down there, say hello, give him these vegetables,” Wirt orders. “Say they’re from The Beast. Got it?”

“Yessir.” Greg salutes and promptly drops all the vegetables. The beets bumble away from him while he and Wirt scramble to pick them up, Greg apologizing and Wirt hissing—and one rolls all the way down the ridge and jumps, spitefully, into the Woodsman’s fire.

It sprays sparks and cracked firewood everywhere. The Woodsman leaps back with a loud curse just as Greg leans over the crest of the hill to shout “SORRY! THAT WAS FROM THE BEAST!”

Another frightened expletive from the old man. “What’s that? Who goes there?!” The Woodsman sweeps the lantern’s glow behind him and up the leafy slope. Pure white light illuminates Greg’s face and stretches its fingers toward Wirt cowering behind him and…

And it feels like the first beam of sunlight after a lifetime in winter darkness, it feels like warmth flooding a skeletal attic, it is a whisper of his own heart and Wirt needs needs _NEEDS—_

Greg skids downhill hugging the greens he salvaged; Wirt hits the dirt on his stomach, peeking through his claws to screen the xanthous glare of his irises; the Woodsman’s eyebrows soar skyward and he rushes to help Greg stand.

“What on earth are you doing out here by yourself, boy? At _night?_ ” The old man waves off the parsnip Greg lifts toward him and lowers himself to one knee, to speak at Greg’s level. “Do you have any idea of how dangerous these woods are? This entire forest belongs to a terrible, vicious Beast, and all the creatures that are slaves to his will—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Greg says dismissively. “You want these roots? I wanna trade.”

The Woodsman shepherds Greg to sit by the settled fire. Wirt smells his sour agitation, can feel the man’s pulse beating into the Dark Lantern’s handle, so he sinks his teeth into the heel of his hand until his canines split the bark. He thought he could do this… Wirt thought that Greg would eclipse his craving for the lantern but that’s his _soul_ in there and he wants it back, he should _take it_ while the embittered fool is distracted by Greg.

“Was that ruckus from you? Did you drop something in my fire?” The Woodsman hunkers down next to Greg after glancing left and right. His furtive movements remind Wirt of a rodent. There’s a rasp when he speaks that wasn’t this bad when Wirt saw him after spring’s thaw. _Deterioration. Fatigue._ He should’ve given Wirt his soul back and rested but he’s too damn stubborn to _listen._ “Now’s not the time to be out and about, hawking your wares. You’re not all by yourself, are you? Don’t you…” A pause. The Woodsman leans in to squint at Greg, elbows on his knees. “Don’t you have a brother?”

“I do,” Greg replies, brightening to one of his favorite subjects. “He told me to bring you all this salad and say it’s from The Beast.”

Fear permeates the night air as if someone opened a can of rotten meat. Wirt huffs to clear it from his nose. “I remember you,” says the Woodsman quietly. 

“And I remember you too, Wood-Chopping Guy, and also Wirt remembers you, and also _also_ I remember that you stole his lantern.” Greg becomes stern when he gets back around to why Wirt wanted him to carry a barrel of vegetables in the first place. “We’re gonna do a trade, got it? Beast-salad for that there lantern.”

Wirt groans under his breath from the top of the hill. Greg is supposed to be charming the socks off the Woodsman and lowering the old man’s guard but their target is tensing his fists, suspicion taut in his shoulders. 

_Laugh,_ Wirt mentally begs. _Please laugh. Please find my little brother delightful._

“Did that wily Beast put you up to this, son? Did he trick you?” There’s… _sympathy_ when the Woodsman sighs and sets a calloused hand on Greg’s head, which the kid preens under. “He took something from you, I bet. Or made you a promise he doesn’t intend to keep.”

“We’re in this together,” Greg claims. “Wirt keeps his promises mostly, as long as I keep reminding him to.”

“Don’t worry,” says the Woodsman. “I’ll protect you.” He throws a bucket of dirt over his fire, smothering the flame.

Wirt goes from flat-bellied to a panther’s crouch—which means, when the Woodsman kicks over the Dark Lantern to muffle its light, his Beastly eyes are the only things blazing in the abrupt darkness. The Woodsman turns toward Wirt’s amber cast spilling over the hilltop and pulls Greg behind him. 

“Beast! I knew you’d be back!” the old man curses. 

“We brought you a present,” Wirt calls down lamely, “in case you w-were hungry or something… it was supposed to be a peace offering...”

The Woodsman fixes Wirt with a sneer that would frost over a pond. "You thought you could use your brother to manipulate me into relinquishing your soul?"  


"That isn't… I'm not trying to…”

Except that’s precisely what Wirt’s plan boils down to. He’d hoped the lantern-bearer would be so delighted by Greg’s quirky personality he’d relax and be receptive to what The Beast has to say. Greg was supposed to be a buffer, a jester, and the vegetables really _are_ a peace offering but ultimately Wirt can’t leave empty-handed. 

“Wirt, he didn’t take the veggies! What do I do now?” Greg waves his arms to be seen around the Woodsman and loses the rest of his offering amid the dull patchwork of yellow light and black shadow. “Aw, beans...”

"This might be the cheapest tactic you've ever resorted to, Beast. Are you going to threaten to turn him into an Edelwood next? You want to torment me with the face of the next victim I have to chop into tinder?"

That comment hits Wirt in the navel. "No! I'd never do that to him—"

"Why not?" snaps the Woodsman. "Because he's a child? When has that ever stopped you?"

Wirt’s irises separate into five colors. His heart pounds like it’s trying to break out of his chest.

“I saw you take this lad home… when did you pull him back into your realm? Did you want him for leverage, or were you _lonely?_ ” The Woodsman doesn’t have his axe on him, Wirt realizes; his wizened hand twitches at his hip to grab a weapon that isn’t there. There’s a red-stained bandage wrapped around his knuckles. Did he scrape them? Was he bitten? “I made the mistake of leaving you boys alone before, and I won’t do it again. You won’t add this one to your forest.” 

“I just want to talk,” Wirt says shakily. “P-please calm down… I obviously haven’t h-hurt my brother, he’s perfectly fine, I’ve protected him…”

“I was thrown to some wolves,” Greg interjects.

“The wolves were _guarding_ him,” Wirt hurries to mollify the Woodsman’s horrified expression. “I’m—I am a _way_ b-better brother than I was, I _swear_... you have to believe me. I just wanted to… to _show you_ that I’m not… bad? I’m… y-you can trust me, Woodsman.”

“So you haven’t claimed the lad yet. Good Beast. You want your moral dessert?” The Woodsman taps the fallen lantern with his boot. Wirt feels the hit inside his ribs. 

“It _is_ my lantern,” Wirt grinds out. “What more do you want from me? References? Greg—tell him what a good Beast I’ve been.” 

Greg inhales to prep himself for listing off Wirt’s fine Beast-brother attributes, yet the Woodsman cracks his neck and stands his ground, unmoved. “Trying to make puppets out of human beings and animals alike, just like the old Beast,” the old man growls. “You make me sick… you and all the misguided sheep who mistake your treachery for kindness.”

This parlay is going nowhere; it’s a less violent repeat of Wirt’s fight with Beatrice, with Wirt wasting his oxygen talking to a brick wall that’s stubbornly determined to hate him. He tries his best not to look too defeated. 

“Yeah, that’s me—the Puppet Master. Come on, Greg. This was a dumb idea.” The Beast crosses his arms at the Woodsman’s narrowed eyes. If the old man won’t hear him out, oh well… Wirt will take the Dark Lantern by force, as soon as Greg is out of the way.

The Woodsman grabs Greg firmly by the shoulder as the boy walks by him. Wirt’s pulse is a white water rush in his ears. “I don’t think so, you scheming devil.”

No. No, he can’t. The old man _can’t_ take Greg from him, too. It killed Wirt when Beatrice kept him from his brother and the threat of it pains The Beast now, a screwdriver in his stomach. “Let go of him,” he croaks.

The old man curls a lip up into a guard dog’s leer. “Come and get him.”

The Beast sleds downhill on his hooves, antler’s spanning like a vulture’s wings, stare locked to the point of contact between the Woodsman’s hand and Greg’s shoulder. Wirt _will not_ walk away without the lantern _and_ his sibling, he will take them _both,_ and the Woodman is powerless to stop him because the old codger doesn’t have that damned axe—

Wirt plows into an invisible wall, two-body lengths from his goal. The cartilage in his nose gives under a spurt of blood and he trips, cradling his face, to sprawl over the leafy forest carpet.

He does not skid as far as he should. The invisible wall condenses into a mass that _seethes_ at him, flooding his lungs and limbs with the oppressive pins-and-needles shiver of paresthesia. He gags out a crooked sound of confusion as he pulls himself backward, frantic to escape.

"What do you know?" the Woodsman says bluntly. "The wards work on birds _and_ Beasts."

“Wirt?” Greg struggles in the Woodsman’s hold, eyes like dinner plates, a catch in his voice. “Are you okay? You need to watch where you’re going—”

“Wh-what _was_ that?” Wirt intends to snarl; the question leaves him in a whimper. He totters to one knee, holding his midsection to keep in organs that feel as if they’ve gone through a paint mixer. From his position he lunges forward again—and that hornet’s-nest pressure drives spikes into him and he blanches.  


The Woodsman grunts, satisfied, within an electric-fence hum of protection that Wirt can’t see. “Used to be nobody believed me when I told them there was a new Beast… but people come ‘round pretty quick when they’ve seen the difference for themselves. Suddenly I don’t sound so crazy.”

Wirt and Greg ask “What did you do to me?” “What did you do to him?!” simultaneously. Hearing a note of angry tears mounting in Greg’s voice has Wirt pushing against the aching barrier all over again, searching for a weak point.

“Now I’m not the only person warning travelers about a blue-eyed demon. Others have seen the Edelwood you grow. They’ve noticed that things haven’t been quite _right_ in the Unknown since the first snowfall.” The Woodsman doesn’t turn to face Wirt as he stalks around his perimeter—confident in whatever magic keeps the antlered boy away. “I still run into towns that mock me for telling tales, of course… though I reckon that’s because they’ve seen you like _this,_ with His shadows and His eyes.”

“I’m not the old Beast,” Wirt mutters. His stare meets Greg’s, and he wills away the shade from his body. “I’ve done good. I’ve… I’ve h-helped as much as I can, I don’t lead lost souls astray, I’m not _like that..._ ”

The crackling energy that rings the Woodsman and Greg turns Wirt’s stomach inside out. He fumbles too close and stumbles, heaving like he’s going to puke, the ground pitching like ocean waves under his hands and knees.

“You need to work on your lying,” the Woodsman admonishes. “You think this pathetic display will get your lantern into those greedy claws? Why not send your oil-varmints after me? All your black scavengers—”

“M-my scavengers?” Wirt asks, appalled. He opens his mouth to ask _where, when,_ and makes a sound like a dog with a chicken bone lodged in its craw.  


“If you throw up you’ll feel better,” Greg peeps, parroting their mother’s advice. He twists to escape and the Woodsman squeezes his shoulder harder and his surprised “ _Ow!_ ” prompts a furious shout from Wirt.

“You’re h-hurting him! Just let him go!”

"Lad," the Woodsman addresses Greg. "Has he been honest with you? About what he's done?"

The muscles in Wirt's abdomen contract. "Don't."

But from the Woodsman’s side, Greg blinks and asks, "Like what?"

The Woodsman's glare bores into Wirt's burning face. Wirt feels the back of his neck reddening. "The _thing_ you call your brother has dug his greedy teeth into the Unknown just like The Beast before him. Stalking the lost. Turning souls into trees. He's not who you remember, despite how desperately he tries to pretend."

"S-stop."

“That monster doesn’t care about you,” the Woodsman drones on. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. If you’re not careful, this leech will turn you into a tree for oil—that is the _only_ reason he wants you around.”

“ _Shut up!_ ”

Greg had a goldfish once, the summer previous the boys’ foray into the Unknown. Poor creature hadn’t lasted two weeks. Wirt had been the one to find the fish floating belly-up in its tank, and irritation pared away any sympathy he might’ve felt. _You didn’t feed it right, Greg. Mom knew you weren’t ready for the responsibility._ The wounded look on Greg’s face that day matches the way he looks now, struggling not to listen to the old man even after the Edelravens and the Edelwolf and the ways Wirt keeps failing to take care of him.

“That’s not true… Wirt wouldn’t turn me into a _tree._ He’d never do that to anybody. Right, Wirt?”

“No, Greg, I wouldn’t—”

The Woodsman loses the fingernail-grip he had on his temper. “ _Stop this charade!_ How can you act as though you’re innocent? You know as well as I do all the graves you’ve made, _Beast._ I only just passed through one village that lost _three daughters_ to your forest, your damned cruel winter, and another town that lost a grandfather! A grandmother! Children, families, loved ones, all _your_ Edelwood! _Your_ gluttony! Begone from here—you’ll never have your lantern _or_ this boy!”

The man’s booming rage rends the forest cowering silent. Wirt’s throat is thick and his eyes are full, he trembles as though physically flogged, and he wants to melt into the leaf litter at the trying-not-to-cry face that Greg is pulling. Coward that he is, The Beast averts his eyes… which is when he notices, for the first time, what must be the “wards.”

It’s no surprise that he missed them. They are small hoops—the largest no wider than his hand—of woven twigs and wheat, placed slyly around the Woodsman’s campsite in tree roots and tangles of undergrowth. Their resonance crashes against him and summons the memory of bones dangling from trees, of hellish clanging in his head, of being trapped in his own body and targeted by arrows. 

Wirt swallows a mouthful of saliva. Where did the Woodsman get these things? And how is he supposed to get Greg, much less the Dark Lantern, if he can’t get past them? 

A mean, mean thought occurs to Wirt. The old man can’t stand in his way if the old man is a _tree._

“I know what you’re thinking,” the old man says, and Wirt’s so taken aback and ashamed he worries he spoke the hateful thought out loud. “Go ahead. Try it. Call your black-blooded monstrosities to strike me down. Grow your roots and be done with this.” 

“F-fine! I _will._ I sh-should have done this ages ago, I can’t believe the first Beast didn’t Edelwood you first!”

Wirt senses the living heat of the Woodsman’s soul, a steady ember compared to Greg’s explosive fireworks. The seed of despair is there, right _there_ in the old man’s bitter core, needing only a song and a strong will to sprout… but encapsulating it is a solid hard-bitten shell of defiance. The Woodsman is hopeless—not broken. All the rage he feels toward The Beast will burn any roots Wirt attempts to grow into him; he may as well have amaro liqueur pumping through his decrepit veins. He is far too alive to be taken by the woods. And… and if Wirt tries to devour the Woodsman _anyway,_ as he’s nearly devoured some souls in the past, then… Wirt will be worse than…

_Not dying. Doesn’t belong to me._

“You can’t do it, can you?” the Woodman scoffs in disgust. “Crawl back to your dirt, you yellow cur. I shall feed the lantern when it is _time_ to feed the lantern, and I’ll find this young lad somewhere safe to stay beyond your rotten appetites.” The gargoyle furrows in his face soften somewhat when he peers down at Greg. “I know this is hard for you to understand… but I’d never forgive myself if another youngster falls to that— _devil!_ ”

He ends in a yelp when Greg does what any other little boy in his situation would do: he bites the Woodsman as hard as he can. 

Victorious, Greg breaks away and darts for Wirt like a bullet from a gun. Wirt drunkenly turns his back for the kid to hop on, operating on reflex alone—and once Greg’s arms are locked around his neck and Greg’s legs are criss-crossed over his stomach The Beast leaps into the nighttime shadow. He loses his footing once, landing hard on his knee, but at Greg’s helter-skelter encouragement and the concrete boot-falls of the Woodsman Wirt becomes the fleetest creature in the Unknown. Trunks lean to lend him room. Branches bend from his path. Roots bow before his hooves, subservient to their Lord’s desire. And behind him all the forest crowds together to trip, tangle, and halt the raving Woodsman.

“Do you feel better now? Did you hurl?” Greg squashes Wirt’s throat on accident, upset, and lets up with a downtrodden “sorry” when Wirt croaks.

“Don’t w-worry about me. That old guy just had some… s-some weird tricks I wasn’t expecting, th-that’s all.” 

The Beast routes through a thicket of elderberry and chokecherry. Twigs interlace the moment they are passed to shield the brothers from sight. Eventually, Wirt and Greg can’t hear the Woodsman chasing them anymore. Wirt’s panting is loud and labored and if he were distracted by anything else he wouldn’t understand what Greg mumbles into his shoulder. “...I messed up the trade.” 

Wirt catches a hoof on an uneven lump of granite and pauses to shake some feeling back into his sore leg. “S’fine.” The grief of losing the Dark Lantern is a heaviness like internal bleeding in his chest cavity. “It isn’t your fault. I th-thought we could get him on our side, but I was wrong. That’s _my_ bad. He wasn’t going to give us that lantern no matter what you did… his mind’s made up.” 

“What are we gonna do?” Greg asks. 

Wirt has tried honesty, he’s done his best to be a humble Beast, but it’s too late to repair his damaged reputation. He can’t fix this. Neither Beatrice nor the Woodsman will listen to him so the truth doesn’t matter and Wirt is _done._

Nothing has ever worked out for him before, so why did he think this would be any different?

“Sleep,” Wirt tells Greg, apathetic. “We’re going to sleep.”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Wirt is too paranoid that the Woodsman will track him down and steal Greg to camp on the ground. He’s also stuck on what the Woodsman said about creatures that are “slaves” to The Beast; if there’s any chance that there are more monsters out there like the Edelwolf then Wirt is _not_ taking it. Greg has to be hidden. Greg has to be safe.

The brothers wind toward a river overlooked by sycamores with branches as big as dinosaur bones. It takes Wirt three tries to scale one monumental tree; his claws keep skidding in the bark, and although the trunk offers bountiful footholds he’s sapped of strength. Those wards unknitted his muscles like yarn. If not for the sycamore doing its best to accommodate him, and Greg clinging to his back like a baby koala, The Beast would give up halfway.

“You can do it, Wirt. Climb up like Spider-Man.”

“I’m t-trying…”

Once Greg is sequestered too high off the ground for most four-legged Edelmonsters to reach him, Wirt wraps thorns ‘round the tree’s wide trunk to dissuade climbing predators. Four barn owl sentries answer their Lord’s call and perch on the outer limbs to face each cardinal direction. If anyone or anything other than Wirt tries to bother Greg in his makeshift nest, the owls’ shrieks will shriek an alarm, and The Beast will come running with claws out and teeth bared.

“This is the ultimate top bunk,” Greg says, relishing his robust bed of interwoven twigs. It’s a technique Wirt perfected on a smaller scale with the nests of squirrels and birds; the sycamore graciously obliged The Beast’s request to grow the way he wanted, and with a few armfuls of field grass to pad the “mattress” Greg is comfortable as a spring chick. “Is this how you sleep sometimes?”

“I usually don’t sleep, Greg,” Wirt reminds his younger brother. He tucks the weatherproof cape Greg had borrowed from the bluebird clan around Greg’s shoulders. An extra barn owl has taken it upon herself to cuddle down next to Greg’s head like a cat; she preens the little boy’s hair as if he’s her owlet.

“But sometimes you do,” Greg presses. When he yawns, Wirt fights an ache in his jaw to do the same. “Are you takin’ the bottom bunk?”

“Maybe.” First, Wirt has to check on Beatrice again—he doesn’t want to prolong her affliction unnecessarily, not since there’s been a necessary amount of suffering she has to ride out while The Beast is busy. Maybe Wirt will point her in the direction of the Woodsman… the two of them could have a merry time chopping Edelwood and hating him together.

Greg’s fingers pinch at Wirt’s rolled-up shirtsleeve. The knit between his eyebrows pulls Wirt’s wandering attention. “The owls will be okay, won’t they?”

Wirt sighs, and the owl guards quickly swivel their heads to consider him with their alien eyes. “They’re birds of prey. You don’t need to worry about…” But Wirt recalls the courageous wolf pack he’d entrusted Greg to, and how uncharacteristically quiet Greg had been the day following their demise, and he bites his tongue for being so insensitive. He isn’t his predecessor; he cares about the animals under his domain. “I’ll tell them to be extra careful. They should be safe up here with you.”

“Good.” Greg smiles, relieved. He pokes a pudgy finger toward Wirt’s nose, where a thread of black traces its way toward his frown. “Will _you_ be okay?” 

Wirt wipes the blood-trail impatiently away and scolds his younger sibling for being gross. “Stop it. Close your eyes. It’s bedtime.”

“Jeez, I was just checking…” Greg’s bedside owl rearranges the hair by his ear, and he drifts off without noticing that Wirt has left.

An aspen grove relays Beatrice’s position to Wirt’s awareness as he grazes the trigger-distance between them. The young woman is sullenly dogging the fountains of orange daylilies and marigolds Wirt sowed to guide her. She misses every other step and falls into black-knotted saplings as if drugged. Her coughing rustles the aspens’ coin-shaped leaves. Beatrice shouldn’t be traveling in this state… Wirt could set up a safe place for her, the same as he did for Greg, but he knows she wouldn’t accept any act of kindness from The Beast.

Thankfully, Wirt has gotten adept at helping others undetected.

Planting lavender underneath honeysuckle arches and between clusters of lilies is as natural to Wirt as playing the keys of a clarinet used to be. He intersperses the purple-flowered batches along the path Beatrice is already on, bundling them more and more thickly ahead of her until they’ve surrounded his friend with their soothing fragrance. Beatrice is beyond drained. Her own body forces her to stop and she collapses in a perfumed pile like a discarded porcelain doll, snoring, none the wiser to Wirt’s subtle intervention.

The Beast waits until he’s completely convinced she’s asleep. He gradually pours into the aspens and lavender and lilies, listening for the cadence of her graveled breath. Although her temperature corrects itself, Beatrice does not rouse from her herb-pillow, even when Wirt shyly sits up to crouch just a yard away.

“Tried to get something for you,” he whispers. “Didn’t happen. Sorry about that.”

His irises flicker blue and yellow, so the light they cast is teal where it blankets Beatrice’s flushed face. He exhales until his lungs are empty, pressed tight as a closed book, and the lavender field sways with his breath. It won’t be hard to reinforce Beatrice’s animosity. She has already lost her faith in him. Instead of fighting an uphill battle to win her back, Wirt just needs to let her hatred run its natural course.

But… The Beast is still allowed to mourn their friendship. He can weep for this loss, this precious thing, even if he knew it would happen eventually.

“See, the Woodsman… doesn’t trust me. He thinks all I want to do is kill people for oil and eat my brother. So, like, you two have a lot in common.” Wirt rests his chin on his knees, hugged to his body. Beatrice mumbles into the crook of her arm and sinks deeper into the lavender. “If I told you to find him and take the lantern, would you listen to me? Would you think I was giving you a different curse? I know it isn’t the best solution… or _if_ it’s a solution… I j-just want something to go right for once. That’s all.” 

Wirt can’t stay by Beatrice’s side all night to give her a tranquil sleep, so he won’t ruin her rest with more of his one-sided bereavement. He’ll be silent and respectful and give her body an hour or so to recuperate before he undoes all that healing by deserting her to find the Woodsman again. To move Greg to safety again. To bungle something else. Again.

_Sorry, Beatrice._

A common pauraque’s whirring call outshines the nighttime chorus of crickets. The Beast turns toward the little bird’s cry, curious, unbarring himself to the aspen grove’s sight.

He’s on his hooves instantly. Wirt has been diligent about leading Beatrice through safe parts of the forest or near homesteads he trusts, and his vigilance quadrupled after the incident with the rabbit-witch twins, so what the hell is another witch doing out here?

The Beast-worshipper—for he _knows_ she is, all of them carry the same horrid pall—has a form that changes as abruptly as Greg flipping channels on the TV. From paper-white bark he catches the witch become bent and old, young and beautiful, a goat standing on two legs, a sun-bleached skeleton, and even with his keen transcendental vision Wirt has trouble focusing on the reality between each glitch of her shape. The only thing that remains constant is her dress, which adjusts to fit her dizzyingly morphing frame. Are the other members of her coven like this? Is her unending metamorphosis a gift from the original Beast? A hex? Is this how she’s always been?

He knows that the strange woman is hunting because of the ominous purpose in her step, the predatory focus that sets her capricious face. Too late, Wirt understands that she’s pacing the daylily path. Stupid, stupid Beast—he’s leading her to Beatrice!

Orange flowers push from the soil throughout the grove, obfuscating Beatrice’s trail in sprays of starry petals. The witch halts, confusion and then amusement tugging at her mouth—which is a dog’s muzzle, a bird’s beak, a jigsaw of exposed teeth, a hint of what she _really_ is beneath. “Damn,” she says boldly to the trees. “Here I believed my Lord was making this too easy for me.”

Wirt rises from the lilies behind her, wearing his midnight robes and his eyes glaring plates of white. “What are you h̜̱u̾͒nti̍n̓ͅg͇̍ for, w̺itc̾ͅh͇?”  


She does not bother to face him, but her arrogant smirk oozes through her voice. “Oh, Lord Beast! Are you to join me on this lovely night for a ritual hunt? The moon is right, my constellation is shining... I could surely use your divine favor in my quest.” That title, _Lord Beast,_ sounds like treacle when she croons it. “A pretty little bluebird is on the menu. Have you seen one around here?”

The lilies, the lavender, the quaking aspen are cave-dark. Wirt’s snarl makes the blackness roil. He stalks toward the witch—who is made of snakes, who is made of stone—and shakes with the impulse to crush her. “What do you w̘̪a̗͉̹ṇ͎t ͇w̗̠͙̼i͈͕ͅt̘̼h̗ hͅe̦r—”

The witch draws a dagger from her sleeve. Wirt’s glare blazes off the metal and bullnettle vines start to slither over the ground where his enemy stands. “My sister and I used to be so gifted, you know. We could make anything look like anything, nightmares and daydreams, whatever we wanted. It cost us _ever_ so much… but the power was worth it, and The Beast’s bargain was fair. We always knew what to expect with our Lord.” She sighs, fond, and holds the shape of a white rabbit-woman for the duration of Wirt’s sharp gasp. “What do _you_ want, Lord Beast? Why is nothing ever good enough for you?” 

“No more killing,” he rushes to get out. “I thought I made that abundantly clear to every coven I’ve dealt with. You don’t have to… it isn’t necessary…”

A shrill laugh from the witch punctures the night. “Darling Prince—of _course_ it is necessary! Death is at the core of every deal! _And The Beast is at the core of every death!_ ”

She unties the cord belting her waist. Wirt has no time to distinguish the charms weighted on either end before the witch pivots quick as a viper and flings the cord like a bolas at his head. 

It flies clear of his scrabbling talons to wrap around the distal tines of his antlers where he can’t reach. At the charms’ first crossing, Wirt is paralized. His joints rust. His tendons freeze. He falls, unbalanced, and thunders a chest-deep warning at the witch as she traipses toward him clucking her tongue.

“Now, pray tell, why would a Beast fall to a _human_ trap? Interesting, interesting...” Her shoes stop a yard in front of him; that’s as close as she can get until the serrated nettles are too thick for her to pass without a machete. “My sister and I were loyal, you know. We did everything that was asked of us. And we would have happily followed you, the newly crowned Prince… but you came and _spat_ on our devotion like it was _nothing._ ” Her eyes—yellow, green, blood-red—narrow to slits. “You abandoned all those who wanted to be faithful.”

Wirt can still speak, but his jaw is half-locked. “I don’t have any f-followers… I n-never made a bargain with you… or anyone.” 

“I shall gain favor,” the witch says over him. “With this sacrifice, I shall reclaim the power I was promised.”

“Don’t you dare h͎͓u̬̖ͅr̘t͙̰̟ h͈̳͔e̺̰r̻. I don’t accept ḥu͂m̠a̠n̈ sa̩c̖r̭ịfîc̍es̩.”

Now the witch glares at him with beady spider-eyes, twirling the dagger in her many-segmented hand. Her fearless scorn floors him. “Pretender-Beast,” she hisses, “I was not planning to sacrifice her to _you._ ”

She breaks from the thistle binding her feet and runs. Her slippery anatomy impedes Wirt’s efforts to stop her—she evades poison-prickled snares with slender insect legs, bony bird’s feet, ox-hooves that trample over his traps like they’re shoestrings. The disorganized spread of lilies confounds the hag, but if Beatrice wakes up and gives away her position on accident the witch will find her, and fearing for Beatrice’s life makes The Beast see _red._

He sinks into sunset petals—pushes jerkily out of an aspen—and launches himself at the witch. His arms seize her around her neck—thick as a stump, thin as a garden hose—and he brings her to the ground with the clout of a linebacker.

Wirt has never played a sport. He’d never been physically violent with a soul prior to the Unknown, has never held his own in a fight, never been more than a weedy timid kid that flinches when people raise their hands toward him, yet no matter what Greg says about “dreaming” _that_ submissive version of Wirt is no more. The fledgling Beast bulldozes the shapeshifter into the dirt with an aggression borne of the forest’s pitiless hunters.

This isn’t like his last confrontation with Beatrice, where he was more invested in defending himself from his friend’s assailment than landing a blow. This is Beatrice's safety on the line. The Beast will not hold back.

His claws dig into the witch's shoulders to push her down. Adrenalin sears past the freezing effect of the cord tangled on his antler. More jagged-edged leaves lash at her, bloodthirsty and tenacious. The witch backhands Wirt across the face but he lunges toward her wrist on its downward arc and bites into feathers, scales, tin plating.

“Charlatan!” screeches the witch. “You are not _worthy_ to wear my Master’s crown!” She wrenches herself sideways and frees herself from Wirt’s talons to strike. Agony slams into The Beast’s side—really _into him,_ lancing through a slot in his lowest sets of ribs and just below his lung. He gasps and his inhale cuts short. She stabbed him. The beldam stabbed him!

Her hand twists the hilt of the blade until it can’t move any more between his bones. Wirt strangles out a growl and hauls himself backward—or wants to, but the witch fists the front of his shirt (his _visible_ shirt, not hidden in shadow now) and reels him in, cackling airily. “We didn’t want to believe all the ridiculous stories the rubes were circulating in their miserable hovels… as if any of them knew what my Lord actually looks like. A _boy?_ A _human_ boy, singing _His_ melody in _His_ great forest?” With every venomous emphasis she twists her dagger back and forth. Pain spreads from the wound and fills Wirt’s abdomen, his whole chest cavity, and slithers up his collar bones to weaken his arms. The witch’s rapidly altering mask makes him sick. “We wondered why the King of Darkness had gone silent to us, why our sacrifices went ignored, _spurned—_ ”

She jerks the dagger out and plunges it back into his ribs, higher up, and Wirt keens.

“What have you done to The Beast?” _Stab._ “You’re a _fake,_ a flesh-effigy…” _Twist._ “How did a mortal overthrow my Master? Who are you? _What_ are you?” The witch is shaking and tears flow down her pig face, jack-o-lantern face. “What makes you so special, imposter?”

Wirt feels the kernel of despair in her, dense as a seed. It is wine-dark, delicious, and his Beastly instincts _want it_ the same as he’s wanted all the other despair that tempts him in the Unknown. He glimpses the truth of the first Beast’s bargain—the ultimate price that all witches like this one must pay for their magic.

She’s not dying. But she does belong to the forest.

_Mine._

Edelwood traps the witch better than his claws had. She brands him with a glower of pure hatred but shockingly accepts her wooden bindings, which move around her transformations like water moves around rock.

“I _am_ T̫̓̈̏h̩̥̚ȅ B̾ȇ̔̑a̘̣͍ṡ̔t now, wh-whether you like it or not.” Pain reaches up Wirt’s throat and pulsates behind his eyes. Acid eats away his veins. He removes the dagger from his side and tosses it into the lavender, but his limb shakes with the exercise. _Poison,_ he thinks. How quickly would this have killed Beatrice? Would the old Beast have felt anything whatsoever?

“No,” the witch says coldly. “You are a _mistake,_ and the Unknown will correct you.” Bark boxes in her face. The form that’s left, fixed by the immobile tree, is too revolting for Wirt to look at.

It’s a face that is immortalized in the Edelwood’s trunk, judging him while Wirt crawls away from it and streaks his black blood over the earth. A face that labels him _pretender, charlatan, imposter, fake._ Wirt never asked to be The Beast—the injustice and permanence of it—but for someone to see him as he is and say what he knows in his heart, that he is a _mistake…_

Guardian or Undertaker or… neither?

_There are many who eagerly await the day that the False Beast **falls.**_

If Wirt is not the undisputed Beast—then _what is he?_ What was the point of taking his poetry, his music, his family and friends, his _life,_ if not to make him the Unknown’s monarch? Why would he have this crown thrust upon him, shackled to him, if he is then expected to fight for it?

Why is he killing himself to free an old man who will never listen to him, and a girl who will never trust him?

_Why is he doing any of this?!_

He hears Beatrice call out to him, startled from her fragile slumber but too far away to see the dreadful Edelwood planted among the aspen or the blue-yellow-pink starburst of his eyes. She calls to The Beast, not to Wirt. She shouts threats into the night, not requests for his company. He treasures her, and she reviles him, and there are who knows how many more in the Unknown that revile him, too.

He’s been balanced on a knife’s edge the instant he blew out the lantern… but now the new Beast has stumbled, and his resolve is hemorrhaging fast.

The old Beast was right. Wirt can’t resist his own impending fall. He stumbles into the lilies and reappears somewhere else, bleeding and alone, because of _course_ he is alone. He can’t save Beatrice. He can’t help the Woodsman. He can’t send Greg home. He wants to sleep, forever and ever and ever, like the lost souls buried in his forest.

He wants to...

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Greg can’t put his finger on the point in which his dream turns from one scene into another. It simply transitions from him riding a tyrannosaurus rex to riding a unicorn, who carries him from his bunk bed in the sycamore and over the river, trotting across the current as if it is a nickel-plated road.

Only it _isn’t_ a unicorn—it’s a deer, whiter than snow before you sled on it and glowing like the sidewalk chalk Greg plays with when the weather is nice. Its antlers fork from its skull like lightning. Its fur is satin-smooth, cuddly as a blanket where Greg smushes his cheek against it.

“Faster,” the little boy requests, patting his stag-steed’s neck. “High-ho, Silver! Awayyy!”

Silver leaps into a cloud of fog billowing atop the water. Greg is kissed by cool mist that glitters from his hair and eyelashes. He stretches out a hand to catch the droplets—elated—but when he draws in crisp damp air to whoop his white deer companion steps out of the cloud and into a field. The closest trees are miles and miles away, their paintbrush-stroke branches tickling the stars. More fog wreaths the grass and smudges part of the field out of sight. 

“This is nice.” Greg smells the dustiness of wheat and cleanness of rain. He does not complain when the stag dips its neck forward to slide him onto the ground. Silver brought him here for a reason—Greg accepts that fact as seamlessly as he accepted the switch from dream t-rex to dream deer. “What’re we searching for, boy?”

The stag parts the stalks with its graceful legs. Greg follows it, his head barely clearing the tall mist-tipped grass.

They stop at the center of the field. Silver becomes vapor, skimming the air and fading from Greg’s sight. Then the dream is a nightmare.

Wirt is collapsed on his back. Black streams from his eyes and nose. When he coughs—a thin, frail kitten-mewl of a sound—more black comes up from his mouth and spurts down his chin. His faintly moving chest gurgles with each wet breath, and Greg knows that’s bad because people only breathe like that when they’re really, really sick… so sick that they have to stay home from school for four whole days and almost go to the hospital for New-Monia, so sick that Mom actually snapped at Greg that one time even though Greg just wanted to bring Wirt some chicken noodle soup. “Your brother needs to _rest_ ,” she’d said, barring the door to Wirt’s room. “He can’t get better if you’re bothering him.”

Conflict tugs Greg in opposite directions. He wants to help Wirt feel better, even though he’s not sure what’s wrong… but what if the best way to help is to leave Wirt alone? What if Mom was right, and Wirt just needs to sleep a good long while to save up his strength? Snot and tears and barf aren’t supposed to be the color of Sharpie, but big brothers also aren’t supposed to have antlers; therefore, it’s possible that all of Wirt’s symptoms are _normal_ for a Beast illness. If there was a bed out here, Greg could tuck Wirt in and watch out for him to make sure nobody else bugs him… then Wirt would get better in no time.

“Hey brother-o-mine, hang in there.” Greg crouches down to pat Wirt on the shoulder encouragingly; Wirt hacks and spits something that flecks the dirt like a handful of Dalmation spots. “Shoot! I’m sorry, did that hurt? Oh, gosh, I didn’t mean to hurt you… I’m real bad at bein’ a nurse...”

“ _Greg._ ” It’s hardly more than a whisper, as if Wirt’s voice has been scraped raw and stringy from so much coughing and hurling. Greg sucks in a sympathetic inhale and winces.

“That Woodsman messed you up good. I’m glad I bit that old curmudgeon. Serves him right.” Greg’s tummy is fisted up from anger and worry but he breathes through it like his dad told him to so he can find a solution. That’s why Silver took him here, isn’t? To help Wirt out? Greg didn’t do such a good job with winning over the Woodsman and here’s his opportunity to do better.

Another white deer with antlers in a different shape than Silver’s stands up about six yards away from where Wirt lies. It tosses its head like it wants Greg to come talk to it, so Greg tells Wirt to wait up for him and jogs off. He has a good feeling about these bright, cloudy deer; they remind him of somebody who helped him not too long ago.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

_Open your eyes, Beast. Will you go so gently into that good night?_

Wirt lurches awake—and gasps out an arrested wail, groveling around the lump of pain that beats at his side like a second heart pumping poison. It is not yet daylight. He lies in a field with the diamond-dust sky above him and not a tree in sight. Fog spreads toward him like cream through coffee, covering the grass, until it seems as if he is suspended on nothing but clouds.

The witch’s poison hasn’t killed him, has it? Why would he be in so much pain if he’s dead?

“H… hello?” Wirt can barely lift his head. His thoughts are submerged underwater, lethargic and ponderous. The charms in his antlers clink together like coins. “Who… wh-who’s there?”

The fog—the clouds—coalesce. A herd of pearl-white deer skate into the field without bending a single blade of grass, glimmering in the moonlight, quiet as falling snow. Their eyes are a limpid black that reflects their own ambient glow like polished obsidian mirrors. While Wirt watches, too weak to do more than observe, they converge to stand in a brilliant ring around him… a forest of slender legs and branching ivory antlers. Their beauty highlights Wirt’s degradation to the point of cruelty. 

He's reminded of wolves, and how they circle weak and wounded prey to end it.

"Wh-who are you?"

A doe separates herself from the immaculate throng. She wears a gold circlet in place of antlers, and it is her kind, maternal voice that alights upon Wirt. _We were never meant to meet, Antler-Crowned Prince… but then, the Dark Lantern is not a throne meant to be stolen. You should not exist. Each moment you spend here is a deviation from destiny for everyone and everything you touch._

Her words should be an accusation, yet she speaks them into his mind with flawless tranquility. That doesn’t stay the stricken leap of Wirt’s pulse.

“Sh-shouldn’t… exist?” He goes to sit up, but his consciousness heaves like a boat on stormy seas. The stags angle their tines at him, warning; the white doe steps closer and brings her dignified visage down to Wirt's level, compelling him to settle down. The Beast cautiously tips his jaw to his chest to guard his jugular. "I blew out the l-lantern. _Me._ Isn't that… I thought…"

_No, Boy-Beast,_ she answers softly. _You are a perfect, perfect fluke._

Despair compresses Wirt’s lungs. Grey mixes with the fair dream-clouds. Brambles sprout from the blood pooling under him and tangle themselves over his stomach, his chest, his neck and face. The milk-colored hind cants her head in either sympathy or detached curiosity, but does not try to clear the thorny vines away.

“What the h-hell… ” The pale herd and the sky melt like a watercolor painting through his brimming eyes. It’s so clear to him, why he has struggled and suffered as The Beast, why he can’t succeed in anything. He doesn’t need a random deer to salt his wounds. “Wh-what… do you _want_ f-from me? Why are you h-here? Th-thought you could… k-kick me wh-while I'm down? Is that what you r-really… came here for?”

A velvet murmur billows through the herd. Wirt’s eyelids shutter… his breathing is heavy, molasses-slow. The presence of the deer, or perhaps the smoothly stirring clouds, make his pain feel distant. He could be snuggled into bed rather than splayed injured in a pasture. Any second now, and Greg will divebomb his fragile serenity. _Hang in there, brother-o-mine._

The doe folds her graceful limbs until she is reposed next to the shallowly breathing boy, not quite touching the briars creeping over his body. The circlet on the doe's head gleams like a halo. She uses her lips to deftly extricate the witch’s cord from his tines. _Usually, it would be impossible for our paths to cross. You can feel that, can't you?_ With the intimate logic of dreams, Wirt can. _However… I heard your wish, Beast. I can grant it for you. But only this once._

“M-my wish?” Wirt croaks. What is she talking about? Did she and her cervid court come all this way just to mess with him?  
This has to be a hallucination woven from exhaustion and curses and wards and his soul-flame's oil starvation. Perhaps he teleported into another trap. Who cares.

The gathered deer extend their forelegs to glide into modest bows. To Wirt’s astonishment, even the doe dips her head in deference… for him. The perfect fluke. _Heartbroken Heir of the Unknown,_ she intones, _we’ve come to grant you peace._

“Peace?” The word is a pickaxe to Wirt’s sternum. He growls in outrage but it’s shrapnel inside of him, grating up organs that the witch’s hex and the Woodsman’s trap has tenderized, and he hacks up something damp and thick that he has to spit into the grass by his head. “H-how… how are you going to g-grant me peace?”

_Is the Unknown not a nightmare to you?_ questions the white doe calmly. _Do you not long for release from your chains?_

“Sh-shut up,” Wirt snarls. He struggles in his layer of thorns and swallows a sob at the anguish this causes him. Is he… he isn’t dying, the Unknown would never let him die, it will just suspend him in this agony while he’s forced to heal and be whole to wander the woods and consume lost souls. Shame on these heartless deer for dangling that impossibility in front of him—damn them, _damn them—_

_You do,_ the alabaster hind states. Her compassion does not match the terror it inspires in Wirt. _You wished to rest…_

Frustration butchers the spell of comfort she’d held over him. “What’s your domain, anyw-way? Are you waiting for me to fall, too? Do you h-hate me?!” Wirt sends a hostile spear of thorns toward the doe; it passes harmlessly through her and she blinks at him with sad, sad eyes. “Go. Please…”

The white stags look to their leader. She is composed, regal, the very essence of mercy. _You are so tired, Beast. Do not be ashamed._ Her muzzle touches his brow like a mother kissing her son goodnight, ignoring the hooks that twine up his temples. _Sleep. You do not have to tend your forest any longer._

Pain is a dream. A memory. Wirt is safe, he is exhausted, he knows the white doe isn’t lying. She truly will let him sleep. “I… I never w-wanted to be here,” he whispers. “I’ve buried the elderly, the sick, the hopeless… kids. I’ve buried kids.” _Children, families, loved ones, all your Edelwood!_ “What will… happen to me?” Wirt swallows. The clouds roll in, in, the softest sheets to tuck him in. His anger dies. What had he been worried about before…?

_I have never laid a Beast to rest,_ the doe admits demurely. _I do not know what will happen, only that it will be quiet… a quiet where you cannot be disturbed, or harmed, ever again. Your heart will cease to ache. I can promise you this._

Nothingness. Wirt’s heaven is nothingness. He craves it so much his heart could rupture. No responsibilities, no consequences, no best friends to rescue or little brothers to guard, and no ageless demon plotting his demise. He licks a dab of blood from his lip and shuts his eyes to the doe, to the stars that aren’t the same ones his mom sees at night. His heart jams like a key in the wrong lock. “I… I can’t. I ha-have to take care of Greg, and what will happen to Beatrice—”

The hind hushes him as if she’s soothing an anxious child. _Those concerns will leave you. Those burdens shall be taken from you, shed like the down of a dandelion. If you do not relinquish your throne, others will destroy you to take it._

“No… I can’t just ditch my responsibilities like that. That’s n-not how it works...”

_This world will not be yours once you leave it. You will be free._

Free. That word rings clear in the fog and makes Wirt quake with yearning.

But…

The clouds darken further, grey to slate-blue. A nervous tension strings the surrounding stags and they paw the vapor-cloaked earth with their hooves. _See how your grief molds the world?_ asks the white doe. _The Beast reflects the Unknown’s desires and it, in turn, reflects the Beast’s. Many would kill to influence the poem you compose of your kingdom… to prevent the change that has already begun. They will torture you. Your loved ones. Unless you graciously abdicate._

“I w-won’t. I won’t leave them.”

The white doe’s tone is smiling, mellow, melancholy. _Why not? What difference does it make? Your brother… your friend… they are only two people, and you’ve done enough. No one could ask you to do more. To refuse this escape is to accept inconceivable pain. Do you understand?_

“I don’t care.” The brambles retreat. “I love them. It’s worth staying and saving them… even if it hurts. Even if it’s hard. I d-don’t care. They’re everything to me.” 

Wirt would swear that is pride blazing from the mythical doe’s gaze. _So then, Beast… you plan to rewrite the Unknown? You will stay and fight those that oppose you?_

He thinks of the villages he’s blessed with crops, the bluebird clan, his adoptive brothers and sisters, Beatrice, Greg. He thinks of the old Beast, leeching from the lives of ravens, desperate to reinfect the forest with fear. “Yes. With all I have.”

_Good. I’d hoped you would say that…_

The clouds glimmer to jewellike brilliance and whisk the stags away like handfuls of stardust. A cirrus ribbon twirls from the mist, soars over the white doe, and circles Wirt’s neck. Ere the Beast can recoil, it takes the shape of a necklace, long enough to lay over his breastbone, beaded with animal teeth of various sizes. The talisman would disturb Wirt if not for the absolute aura of safety that ensconces him like a shield, a rightness and belonging that lifts him from the snare of the curse his body is battling. He touches one tooth, inquisitive, and gasps sharply at a sudden rush of sheer warmth—warmth aimed at _him._

“Th-these are teeth,” Wirt slurs, dazed. “Wh-why am I wearing teeth?”

_A gift, from your subjects with no voice,_ the white doe explains. _You think of this place as your prison, yet it wants you, Lord Beast. It chooses you. And it will protect you, if you let it._

“I don’t understand,” Wirt stammers. “Protect m-me? It’s… it’s m-my job to protect the Unknown. I thought?”

_As you say, so it shall be. You are beyond any laws but your own._ The white doe stands, elegant as a ballerina. Her coat takes on the miasmic quality of the clouds while Wirt gawks at her, uncomprehending. _Sadly, this is all I can do for now… but I am glad that we were finally able to meet. You have my support, Pilgrim._

That title jars Wirt. He sits up straight, and is amazed that the punctures in his side have stopped burning with venom. He reaches out to the doe and his claws brush fog. “W-wait,” he pleads. “I still need your help. The Woodsman… he has my lantern, and my friend needs it. Could you… is there any way to convince him… to convince him to…”

_Hmm… a hint._ The fading doe’s gaze twinkles. _The Woodsman’s daughter lives._

How the hell is that going to help him? “Who are you? Will I see you again?”

_I pray not, Beast,_ answers the white doe. And she disappears, part of the moon’s glow and daybreak, clouds and the wind, leaving Wirt with a thousand questions and a cuspid medallion.

Wild rustling in the grass betrays the location of someone else in the pasture, arrowing in on where Wirt is sitting. He recognizes the sunshine blaze of this spirit, the piping voice, the limitless energy barreling toward him past the stalks of crested dog’s-tail. “I left you in a tree,” Wirt says stupidly. “I put you to bed _up in a tree—_ ”

“WIRT!” Greg throws himself at Wirt, heedless of his older brother’s injuries, and points enthusiastically to the necklace adorning his own neck. It’s woven from natural fibers and, yes, there’s a tooth. “You’ll never believe what happened! I had a dream about unicorns and they flew me right out of bed and they gave me this neat award—isn’t that cool? I know it really happened because I’m still wearing it and—whoa! So are you! Yours is even cooler!”

“Yeah…” Wirt experiments with standing up, and doesn’t know how to react to the fact his stab wounds have nearly mended shut. The white doe healed him, or made it so his own body could heal itself. He’s glad and relieved despite the fingernails of dread prodding the nape of his neck. “You saw them too? The deer?”

“Unicorns, deer. Potato, tomato,” Greg says flippantly. “You should’ve seen ‘em, Wirt, they’re my best friends now and I love them very much. They said not to worry about you and that it would all be okay and _check you out!_ You look way better! Can we do a round of ‘Can He Grow That’ for breakfast?”

“Er… okay. Sure.” Wirt tries to imagine what the deer offered his brother, if Greg had a wish. He wonders if the white doe has a price for the blessings she bestows.

_The Woodsman’s daughter lives._ Wirt can’t appeal to the Woodsman with nature’s bounty or Greg’s charm, but if the white doe wasn’t lying… The Beast just found what he can trade the Dark Lantern for.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

The Unknown is aware of the Woodsman’s daughter. It tells The Beast where she is as soon as he knows how to ask, showing him a beautiful log cabin homestead with a well and a stone wall and a very, very lonely girl about his age tending it all by herself. Wirt kicks himself for not thinking to look for her sooner… he, like the Woodsman, had believed her dead, and Wirt had extinguished the old Beast before that demon might’ve revealed the truth.  


The cabin becomes the focal point for Wirt’s master plan. He reroutes Beatrice and revists the Woodsman—alone this time—to provoke the old man’s rage.  


“Thanks for turning my brother against me,” Wirt sneers from the branch of a beech at sunset, when Greg is halfway to Anna. “He gave up hope. A new Edelwood for you to grind to oil.”  


The Woodsman doesn’t want to listen. Doesn’t want to believe him. But he doesn’t know that Greg is safe anymore than he knows his daughter is alive, and he curses The Beast until a vein pops in his left eye and the young monster abandons him, cackling.  


A day after that, Wirt approaches the old man again. The teeth tucked under his shirt and touching his chest make The Beast brave. Greg has only a few more hours until they arrive at the cabin, and that makes Wirt eager to begin the game that will drive the Woodsman where he wants him as surely as reins on a mule. He marches to his foe’s campsite, noting that those circular wards do not buzz at him as they did before. _Immunity._  


“Bastard,” the Woodsman snarls. He points his axe at Wirt, having never put it down after the hooved devil told him that he’d turned his brother into Edelwood. “You know how this goes. You cannot come any closer, and you killed the only ally you had that could! The wards—”  


“Don’t work anymore.” Wirt scrapes his hoof past a wooden hoop to demonstrate. It snaps open and all the rest do the same, making the Woodsman jump as if zapped with static. The Beast barks out a laugh. “How will you stop me now, Woodsman?”

“Like _this!_ ”

The Woodsman attacks. Wirt cranes backward, unprepared for the sudden rush, raising his antlers out of the way so the Woodsman can’t sever them as he’s tried in the past. But Wirt dodges the wrong way. The Woodsman wasn’t aiming for his antlers.

The axe slams into his shoulder, just shy of the angle where his clavicle meets his neck. Wirt’s vision whites out. His lungs are made of glass. He doesn’t dare try to breathe.

Even the Woodsman is stunned. For a moment the old man just stares bug-eyed at the place where his blade cleaves meat and wedges into bone, a blow that would have decapitated The Beast if he’d swung just a _little_ more to the right. He doesn’t breathe either. A sick wave of regret floods his stomach, because in this shocking instance of time—when the axe has sundered flesh instead of animated wood—the old man could almost convince himself that he’s just murdered a boy.

Then he tears his weapon free, and The Beast bellows a roar that no human boy could make. Blackness sprays from the wound, a color that no human boy should bleed. And The Beast glowers at him with three-ringed soulless discs that no human boy will ever possess.

“You…” The Beast rasps and swallows but that simple flex of muscle sends an onyx fountain from his dissevered shoulder and over his chest and he can’t speak anymore. 

The Woodsman hears the weighted _plip_ of The Beast’s blood dripping from the blade’s curve and hitting the deadfall. “I had to do this,” he rambles, clenching the axe’s handle until the bandage on his knuckles is spotted with fresh red. “I had to, after everything you’ve done, everything you _will_ do. You’re too dangerous. You shouldn’t have been able to… the coven said… you’re a monster, a _monster…_ ”

When Wirt phases into roots and reassembles to keep Greg moving, he wears his shadow-robes to hide the damage. He refuses to let Greg hug him or hang off his shoulders. He brushes off Greg’s questions with the same casual lies. _I’m tired. I’m hungry. You’re too heavy, I need a break._ He drops Greg off at the cabin at last, checks that Beatrice is in position, and starts the game, tricking the Woodsman into thinking that The Beast is unfazed by his own exposed marrow and the implications of vengeful covens and broken bargains. He pins poor Anna in a temporary Edelwood shell and surrounds the homestead with thorns.

His plan goes how Wirt wanted it to. Until it doesn’t.

He endures the blade of the axe again. The protective charm of animal teeth can’t heal him any faster than he is physically capable of, especially given how long it’s been since his flame last tasted oil. Wirt may have burned through all the recoveries he is permitted as a supposedly deathless god.

Distraught at the state of its Beast, the Unknown takes him into its embrace. It tries to staunch his bleeding with wildflowers. It blankets him with earth and holds him possessively in its roots. Wirt sleeps and dreams in mushrooms, in streams, lulled into a deep slumber by the satisfaction of reuniting the Woodsman with his beloved child and giving Beatrice her ticket to freedom via the Dark Lantern. The white doe told him to rest, and now he is _allowed_ to. It is a blissful, numb surrender.

And then Beatrice loses the lantern.

Heat disturbs The Beast in his nest of moss. He has to fight himself free of the ferns spread over him, the vines binding his ankles, because the Unknown does not want to let him go. The clear evening sours with a murmur of rain that follows Wirt to the gorgeous orchards of Appleonia, where Beatrice was supposed to recuperate too. 

His soul waits for him respectfully at the base of Appleonia’s only Edelwood, whose bark weeps from a hasty gash. Wirt flattens his palm against the split, shivering at the nova of energy held within that gilded oil, and seals the tree with what’s left of his strength.

“Wh-what happened… to the girl… that h-held this?” Wirt slides down the Edelwood’s trunk and sits down next to the lantern. Not touching it. He can’t touch it, or he’ll take it. 

A young woman with a dappled brown horse’s head waits downhill, ten paces away. Wirt’s abrupt appearance—limping from a Pink Pearl apple tree—astonished her so badly that her posture is stiffer than an iron rod and her eyes are wide as the moon. “You came here so quickly,” she blurts. “I brought the lantern here myself… is it The Beast’s? I’ve only heard about the Dark Lantern in stories so—”

_His soul._ He can save himself. He can take his soul and burn all the Edelwood he wants, let the thrill of life scorch him inside out. 

“I need to… talk to her.” Wirt meets the girl’s eyes with pleading blue light. “ _Please._ Can you… help me? Can you h-help me talk to her?”

He hopes Beatrice is still here. He trusted the people of this town to welcome her, not to drive her out, and he can’t go after her like this. 

“Sorry, yes, absolutely,” says Holly Hotchkiss, curtsying. “Anything for you, Wanderer.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Tracks: "Bluebird" by Mindy Gledhill; "Wandering Souls" by Mindy Gledhill; "Nowhere Now" by Matthew and the Atlas; "For Someone" by flora cash
> 
> You'd _think_ I have all the time in the world to write during quarantine, but that is not so! Between hosting virtual game nights for my buds and sewing masks for/entertaining my family I struggled to make the time to sit down and finish this part. Thank you for your patience :)
> 
> We've finally come full circle from The Cabin to the present. If you feel left in the dust after the gap in updates, let me know.
> 
> Shout out to Whiggity for half-beta-reading chunks of the final chapter. 
> 
> I hope everyone is staying self and healthy out there!


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